Nom de Plume
by paramorebrighter
Summary: Alexis takes up a secret career writing erotica under a pen name to show she can successfully write and publish a book without her father's pull in the literary industry. How long can she hide it before her smash hit alter-ego gets exposed? (No graphic sex, rated M for mature language, sexual assault mentions, and light drug use)
1. Chapter 1

_Disclaimer- I still don't own Castle, Andrew Marlowe does, and I don't want him to sue me for playing in his sandbox. I'm just having fun, I make no moneys._

_Okay, this fic was inspired by 3 different things:_

_The resurgence of really, really bad erotica that's being published these days and is becoming "mainstream." I look at my own fanfiction where I've written erotic scenes and then compare it to the Richard Castle novels and snort. That's a fade-to-black, sorry._

_I saw the Belle Knox story and was fascinated. An ivy league student who did porn for a living until she was outed and threatened off campus. Kinda sad, but if she's not ashamed of her choices and thought them out, more power to her._

_The book Sneaking Candy by Lisa Burnstein. She's an excellent writer and I lover her YA books! Check this book, and the Pretty Amy series, out. They're worth it!_

* * *

It's one in the morning. And I'm trying to go to sleep. All I can think about is that stupid wedding I'm supposed to be in for my father and his fiancee in a few months. And for fuck's sake, they're having sex right now and think I can't hear them.

Vomit.

I rolled over, leaning over the side of my bed to root through my backpack to find my iPod so I can't hear them.

Don't get me wrong, I have a really good view towards sex for a child of divorce; I'm not exactly afraid of it, but I don't exactly share. When Dad and I had that super-awkward sex talk when I was twelve (that ended with him taking notes from me) what I took away from it was that he didn't want me engaging in risky behaviors (in other words, use a condom at all times), that he wanted me to have good sex, not be afraid of it, and that I could go to him about anything. I guess I owed him that, too. I eventually confessed out of guilt and depression that I had had sex during the Princeton Summer Program first time between junior and senior year at Prep school with Carter. Dad looked crestfallen, but never got mad at me, just asked if we had used protection. I admitted yes, we had been safe, but it hadn't ended well. He walked me through a rebound relationship (thank GOD I didn't have sex with that boy) and then I met Ashley.

I shoved my earbuds into my ears and turned on the Weepies to drown them out. But, they weren't loud enough to muffle the sounds of unbridled passion.

Christ. I needed to move out of here.

Kate had confronted me about moving back home; _Is it me? I don't want you to feel like you can't come back home because of me,_ she had asked me. Don't get me wrong, I like Kate a lot; I just wished we lived in a bigger place. Even though Dad has a top-floor loft and it's huge for New York standards, lofts notoriously lack soundproofing.

The Weepies were not enough. I turned on the Weeks instead,_ The House That We Grew Up In_ blared into my ears. Tara and I were planning on seeing them in Williamsburg this summer together, when she got back from Israel with her brother and mom. And yes, I admitted to myself that I was not getting back to sleep for a while. I had been having a lot of insomnia lately; this whole break-up thing with Pi had left me without a lot of confidence. I broke up with him mainly because I got tired of the amount of blow jobs he tried to pressure me into, shoving my head down when we were making out. Couldn't he just ask, like a normal person? I kept on wondering if that was normal. There needs to be a little mystery in a relationship, I'll be honest. Call me a delusional romantic, but being pressured into giving BJ's when you really don't want to do one is not a fantasy of mine. And he had the balls to make me feel bad about it. And then, the bathroom was not a private place when the door was shut. Taking a shower alone? He never let me, and it got irritating when I was just relaxing under the shower spray and suddenly, the shower curtain tore back and he scared the shit out of me. _You're wasting water, babe,_ he told me. It left me wondering if I was just a prude or something for wanting to shave my legs (and other choice areas) without him watching and talking to me about the number of bees in White Plains and the deal he got on a dimebag. I got up from my bed and picked up my computer, opening it, it glowed to life in the semi-darkness of New York City.

I could never let Dad know that I was working on a manuscript called _Love's Triangle_. Hell no. I could never do what he did. I don't know how he wrote novels so quickly. I had been working on this one since my junior year of high school. I had finished it, but I kept on picking at it. Dad could never, ever find out about it.

I had been harboring fantasies of publishing _Love's Triangle_ under a _nom de plume_ and never telling anybody it was me. I couldn't stand the idea of the comparisons that would come from having a writer father who was a much, much bigger name to live up to. I could hear everybody sneering, _you'd have never gotten published if it weren't for your fathe_r. Couldn't a girl do something for herself?

I had researched agents and even made up a pen name; Harper Rogers. I had a perfect query letter that I had worked on for months and nit-picked and rewritten and obsessed over when I was living with Pi. He even glanced over it and said it was _okay_... before we broke up. He was always dragging me down. He was a college drop-out and was doing crap jobs to get by and I ended up paying for everything because he spent most of his paycheck on weed after the rent and utilities. Pi had criticised me during sex, too. I quit faking it when he had criticised me enough. I wasn't going to give him anything he hadn't earned.

To hell with Pi. He thought my writing was blasé, not ready to be published? I'd show him.

I opened up my email for Harper Rogers and the spreadsheet with the list of literary agents who'd accept an adult urban fantasy and picked out four agents names. I went ahead and sent ten emails out to each of their submission boxes, each query letter tailored and edited to be personal enough. And I hit send. Then, I went insane and sent query letters out to ten other agents, like a mad woman.

Once I hit send for the final time, the panic welled up in me, suddenly. What if they knew who I was? What if the writing samples weren't right? What about the hook in the query letter?

_Oh shit!_

I felt panic rise up in me and I couldn't help but pace around my room, realizing that the loft was dead silent now and the Weeks had stopped playing on my iPod.

Well, there went my entire night's sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

_Disclaimer- I still don't own Castle, Andrew Marlowe does, and I don't want him to sue me for playing in his sandbox._

* * *

I went downstairs, bed-headed and exhausted at six-thirty. I had an Econ lecture at nine this morning. Kate was standing in the kitchen, making coffee, in her pajamas and Dad was reading from his iPad.

"'Morning, honey. Have a good night?"

I thought about telling him no, I had insomnia from the trauma of listening to the two of them get it on but embarrassing my parents because I couldn't sleep was downright mean. "I did, actually!" I blurted out. "Can I have some coffee?"

"Sure, I was making a few extra cups for you," Kate said, getting a mug out from the cabinet. She tried so hard to get me to like her, sometimes, especially since she and Dad got engaged. Don't get me wrong, I did like her, but now that she was living with us… She poured a cup for me and handed it to me. This was maybe a quarter of what I needed this morning. I'd grab a venti coffee from Starbucks on the way to school.

"Thanks," I said, sipping my coffee black. "Dad?"

"Yeah, honey?" he asked, looking up from his iPad. He was reading_ Publishers Weekly_ like he did every morning.

"How long did it take you to get a response from your agents when you were querying for your first book?"

"Oh honey, that was twenty years ago! I think… I think the longest I ever waited to hear back from an agent was a year."

I felt a little sick. "A year?"

"Well, that was back when querying was mostly done by snail mail, not email," Dad said, shrugging. "Why are you asking?"

"Well… um… I've got friends at school that want to be writers," I lied. Well, that wasn't a total lie. I was in a Victorian Literature class that had a lot of aspiring writers in it. I denied that I was related to Richard Castle when people heard my last name, just said it was a coincidence and promptly put them on my people to ignore list. Dad's friends and former professors gave me a pass and went along with it. "I just wanted to give them a realistic expectation of querying."

"Oh, okay. Well, you know what kind of people to stay away from, but if they just want to talk about getting published, I'm happy to tell them what I know. But don't promise any recommendations to my agent."

* * *

I didn't get any hateful rejection letters from any agent that told me just to stop writing right away for _Love's Triangle_. Instead, I got a few form rejection letters that weren't so bad. I supposed my query never got past the interns pre-screening them to the actual agents. Maybe nobody gave a crap about twenty crappy query letters from some idiot named Harper Rogers who didn't know what the hell she was doing.

It was after the wedding, while Dad and Kate were on their honeymoon, that I checked the Harper Rogers email for shits and giggles to find yet another response to a query letter.

Rejection #20. It's over.

I opened it.

Karé Baxter from Baxter and Associates Literary had responded.

_RE: QUERY: Love's Triangle_

_Dear Harper,_

_I know you're actually Alexis Castle. I used to date your dad, remember? You need a better penname, I'll be honest. Your Dad will guess if he sees this name, he's no dummy. I hope you're doing well, I heard you're in Columbia, now. Good job!_

_I know you're trying to break into writing without using your dad's name or clout, and that's admirable. Very admirable. Most people who have famous parents ride their coattails, and it's kind of pathetic. While _Love's Triangle_ is *pretty* good, you need to use your real name and ride your father's coattails if you ever want to actually sell it. I'm not saying this to be bitchy, but just as a professional opinion. Keep in mind, I get over 10,000 query letters a year (that's 27 queries, synopses, and samples to read a day, if I didn't take days off or vacations), and I only took on 2 new clients last year. I can't sell this or push it right now; the market's oversaturated. You're not JR Ward or Kathleen Kress… yet. I think you've got a lot of potential, but when it's almost impossible to sell a new paranormal, I just don't have room to represent it, either. I wish I had room for you, but I don't. Kathy's in that spot, and I love her. She's a new adult paranormal jauggernaut. It's not that I wouldn't love to have you as a client, but I don't think I can get it to an editor at any of the Big 5 publishing houses. I'm sorry, but it's the truth. Also, I have E.K. Taylor to represent. I feel the need to be honest with you because I feel like I owe it to you. You are really talented, but you're not going to get anywhere without your father's clout unless you publish something successfully, first. Something that somebody isn't doing but isn't too unfamiliar._

_What I did enjoy was the love scene between your two leads in the sample (although I felt a little perverted reading it because you might have been my stepdaughter in another dimension. Tell your Dad congratulations on getting married again by the way, she seems like a really amazing lady and role model). You really have a knack with writing really steamy, hot sex, and it got me all hot and bothered. Maybe you should focus on that. If you can come up with a few more purple prose adjectives and descriptive nouns for 'cock' I might be able to sell something of yours to a smaller erotica press. You don't have to use your real name or this Harper Rogers nonsense, and it would get you some publishing credits. So, basically, my advice to you (don't tell your father I told you to do this) is to write some erotica and try to sell it under another penname that doesn't give away your identity at a smaller press. You might as well give it a try._

_Best of luck,_

_Karé Baxter_

_PS: I have this feeling Ellington is going to jump ship soon, her ego's getting so big you can see it from outer space along with her the size of her bloated ass. So, I might have an opening in my roster for a new erotica writer soon. Got anything that fits the bill?_

I was shaking as I read the letter.

I remembered Karé Baxter from when I was in jr. high right before Dad married Gina. I honestly thought I could get away with hiding that I was Alexis Castle and I was querying this book. For fuck's sake, was my penname really that obvious?

I sighed and took a deep breath. Well, that was all the query letters. Dad called it "shelving" a project when Gina couldn't sell it to an editor at a publishing house, which hadn't happened in a long time. I guess that I could actually write if she thought it was good enough.

Was I supposed to be a writer? I had dreamt of it since I was a kid. I wanted to write what I wanted to write, but the competition was stiff. And I had standards; I wasn't going to ride my father's name and sellout to get there.

The idea to write erotica, though… Ellington "E.K." Taylor was a bitch from South Carolina that had a lot of success with her erotica book (the title character was obviously a thinner, sexier, 'awesomer' version of herself, a Mary Sue) she had self-sold to a small press. It ended up selling over three million copies, and she got signed with Harper-Collins' erotica imprint and Karé Baxter to re-release the book. There was a movie in the works and when I checked out her twitter account, she hadn't stopped talking about it. I knew her because she was in love with my father, and he was scared of her, she was so bat-shit crazy. Most of this I knew from spot-reading Dad's copies of _Publisher's Weekly_.

She was a train wreck, to put it lightly. Really, she was. Always showing up drunk, going to events in designer clothes that barely fit her ass and being loud and obnoxious. When Dad found out about how in love she was with him (it was quite obvious), he referred to her as EEK Taylor. She hated Kate and made no secret, but Kate didn't give a rat's ass about it.

I had downloaded a pirated copy a while back, but had never read it. I opened it up and started it.

I could do better than this. I really could.

I went downstairs and made a cup of tea and poured out some goldfish crackers before sitting down at my laptop to write. I had had a long-standing fantasy about Jensen Ackles from _Supernatural_ for a while. It was worth being written down just to try. I made up a name, Colton du Lac. A little corny, yet it was different. My heroine? I used the name Rowena Decker and made her a trouble young lady from New York with a mane of black hair.

It flowed from my fingers as it made the journey from my brain to the keyboard. Plot? P'shaw! Who needed plot with porn? Before I knew it, the sun was rising, my eyes felt dry and itchy, and I checked the word count: 10,224 words.

Whoa. On a good day, Dad bragged about writing 6,000 words. I had just written almost twice was he did. I reread the two erotica scenes I had written.

I felt a little hot and bothered myself, but I realized something; I actually had something here.


	3. Chapter 3

_Disclaimer- I still don't own Castle, Andrew Marlowe does, and I don't want him to sue me for playing in his sandbox._

* * *

"Alexis!" Dad shouted from the downstairs. "Let's go!"

We were at the Hampton's house this weekend. Dad and Kate had just gotten back from their three-week long honeymoon, and were being really secretive. I didn't mind; I had written almost eighty thousand words on my erotica manuscript that I had tentatively titled _Benefits_. I was working on it right now, and it was almost finished. I wasn't doing a BDSM like Ellington Taylor, but instead, I had Colton as an old friend of Rowena's, and he found out that she had been with a loser for the last three years, and showed her a world that went beyond just the missionary position. They insisted on only being friends. But, Rowena was secretly harboring feelings for her friend with benefits. So far, I had twelve sex scenes in varying positions, not counting orgasms and was considering writing a threesome, although I had never been in one myself. Hey, porn research taught you a lot of unrealistic things about sex, but apparently, readers wanted that.

Damn, this was taking off. I couldn't stop, and I was getting very irritated with Dad trying to drag me away from my laptop for this stupid beach party at Elton John's Hampton House down the street.

"Coming!" I shouted. I saved the Scrivener file and closed it out. Then, I looked down at what I was wearing. Jean shorts were not good enough for Elton John's. I tore off my clothes and grabbed an off-white romper with red sailboats printed on them. I had a pair of red espadrils to wear with the outfit, too. I grabbed a cardigan and a strawhat and I was ready.

"Alexis, come on!" Kate shouted. "We're waiting!"

"Almost ready!" I yelled. I ran down the stairs, my shoes in my hands.

"You weren't getting ready during all that time you went upstairs?" Kate asked, seeing what I was wearing. Dad was outside, getting the car ready.

"I was doing stuff," I scoffed. "Are you okay?"

"I'm a little nervous," Kate admitted. "I usually crash these parties with my badge."

"Don't be," I said as we went outside. Dad's car was waiting, and he had pumped the A/C. "Elton John… he's just like anybody's favorite gay. Just leave him alone about touchy subjects."

Kate nodded.

"You're running late," Dad said. "It's rude to be late, Alexis."

"I know!" I apologize profusely, getting the strap on my shoe buckled. "I'm sorry!"

"It's fashionably late," Kate defended me. "All women have to be."

We were buzzed through Elton John's gate and rolled in. He had an impressive estate, one that was still gorgeous to look at. Dad pulled up to the valet desk, and the guy in the red vest took the key as we got out.

We were greeted at the front door by Cecily Van Der Poole, a sociallite who spent her summers in the Hamptons. A good thing was that some of my friend's families had been invited to this party.

I hadn't seen Tara since spring break. She said she had been invited, too. They had spent most of the summer at her father's Hampton house so far. I saw Paige van der Poole all the time in New York. I don't think she was going to be in college much longer; she was doing the debutante circuit in Manhattan, and was hitting up all the social events this summer.

Paige was sitting at the bar, chatting up a cute young man in Vineyard Vines summer yatching clothes and Birkenstocks.

"Alexis!" Paige shouted. "Over here!" She opened her arms to hug me. "You look fantastic!"

"Thanks," I said, noting her J Crew ensemble. "So, do you."

"This is Septimus Lindo," she said, indicating the guy. I knew the Lindos; quite stuffy and well-to-do Upper East Siders. The Hamptons were basically the social scene of New York society condensed. "Sept, this Alexis Castle."

I had heard his name around the high school parties back in Prep school. He always had the best drugs and was a party animal who got into Yale. "Nice to meet you," he said.

"You too," I replied.

"Can I get you a drink?" he asked.

"Can I get a…" I almost asked for a beer, but girls didn't drink beer around these parts. "A cosmopolitan, please?"

"Nice," he said, getting behind the bar and making the drink for me. "I know that one."

"I've known Alexis since junior high at Marlowe Prep," Paige said proudly. "She's one of my best friends, she goes to Columbia."

"Marlowe Prep, huh? Not the Walton Day School for girls?" I knew he had gone to the brother school nearby. The girls at Walton were sluts, at least we thought so at Marlow Prep.

"My dad wanted me to socialize with the opposite sex," I explained.

"Well, we can't all be brains," Paige teased him.

"Here you go, one cosmopolitan." He handed me the bright pink drink and I took a sip.

"Mmm. You did good," I replied. "Has Tara come by?"

"No, not yet," Paige said.

There was a crash and I saw a heavy woman in a caftan clunk through. "I thought this was going to be pool party!" she slurred with a loud, obnoxious Southern accent. "And I came all dressed in my swim suit!"

It was Ellington Taylor. She looked like she had already been drinking. For Pete's Sake, it was only five in the evening. "I heard Richard Castle's here! We can talk shop!" she continued. I ducked my head down, hoping nothing about me would connect this train wreck to my father and then me by default. Dad would never forgive me.

"Ugh, she's awful. New money," Paige sneered where I could hear it.

Like Dad and I weren't? Grams had been raised by her carnie parents before becoming an actress and had taught me a few tricks when it came to manipulating people, although I rarely used them out of guilt.

"Well, some people can't help themselves," Sept said. "Oh God, watch her!" His face contorted. I sort of liked this guy.

"So tell me more about the brother school I could have been paired with had I gone to Walton Day," I said to Sept.

* * *

It was dark enough that nobody could see that Sept and I were going to the sand dunes. He said there was an abandoned beach house that was going to be demoed in a few weeks. I wanted to see it, my fascination with haunted houses, a conversation subject that Sept and I had been talking about over my cosmopolitan. Yes, I was a little drunk already, there was a lot of vodka and triple sec in it.

"Where is it?" I asked. I saw a house in the distance with the lights on, but no abandoned beach house.

"Right over here," Sept said.

"Where?" I asked.

Instead, he whirled around and kissed me without warning. Before I knew it, his hands were roaming my sides and up my romper. I didn't want to have sex with him on the first night we met, it seemed really trashy. His hands were getting dangerously close to the strapless neckline. "Stop," I said, grabbing his hands by the wrists and wringing away.

"Why do I have to stop?" he murmured, advancing towards me.

"Because I didn't come out here with you for this-"

"Are you still a virgin?" he smirked.

"Ass hole," I snapped, pushing him away. I should have slapped him. "And you just wrecked your chances of ever being with me by lying!"

"Alexis, don't you walk away from me," he snarled, grabbing my arm so hard, he'd probably bruise me. "You're being a cock tease-"

"Stop it!" I cried, struggling. I shoved him, hard. The fear rose up in my stomach and up my throat. Just because I went down the beach alone with him didn't automatically mean I wanted to have sex with him. He had faked me out. "Leave me alone!" I shouted.

The first firework lit up the night sky as I tried to scramble away. "Alexis, let me explain something to you," he said, grabbing me by the romper and tugging it down and shoving me into the sand face-first. I screamed and tried to cover up with my arms, but he kept on tugging on my outfit. "You don't turn down a Lindo-"

"Is there a problem?"

I gasped and looked up to see someone coming down the beach. He was tall and wiry, and headed towards us.

"Why don't you go back to the valet desk, this doesn't concern you," Sept snarled.

"The lady is asking you to stop what you're doing, but you're continuing," he said in a Southern accent. "That's called assault. You can go to jail for that."

"When you have money, it can be reduced to a misdemeanor," Septimus replied as if he were asking a stupid question and needed a condescending explanation. I felt sick when he told me that. He had let go of my outfit, and I used that opportunity to pull it back up and get to my feet. The valet was watching us with crossed arms. I was so happy he was there. I ran to his side.

"You're an asshole," I snapped. "You can go to hell."

"And you're a _nouveau riche_ cunt," Sept snorted. I gasped: that stung. He really was an entitled prick.

"Stay classy. I'll walk you back to the house, okay?" the valet offered me.

"I will kill you-" Sept started.

"I've killed nine people by sniper in the Marine Corps in Afghanistan, do you really think I'm afraid of breaking your chubby, coked-out ass over my leg?" the valet snorted.

"You'll never work in this town again, you broke, stupid shit!" Septimus called after us as we walked away. "I don't care if you were so poor you went into the Army, asshole!"

"The Marines are not a part of the army, dickhead. You don't even know my name," the valet called after him, slipping an arm around my shoulders to guide me away. My God, he was so tall, at least a foot taller than me, I had to look up to see his face. "He can go jerk off into the sand dune," the valet said to me, getting out a joint from his pocket. He lit it up. "Sorry, I didn't ask. You don't smoke, do you?"

"Actually, I do," I admitted. He put the joint to my lips and I took a drag.

"I guess money can't make you a gentleman," he muttered. "Are you alright?"

"Well, chivalry is a lost art," I noted, adjusting my top. "And I'm fine. Ever since I've been in college, I can't seem to attract decent men, I swear."

"Gentlemen are still out there, I promise," he said. He had short black hair that had been slicked back with gel. He hadn't shaved too well today, his jawline was covered in stubble. "You just gotta look for them outside your usual places."

"Yeah," I agreed. "Maybe I shouldn't be looking for men with money. At least old money. It's a problem, it seems."

"I wish I had that problem." We shared the joint a few feet from the lights of the party and it calmed me down. I felt a lot better when I had had a few puffs.

"You're my hero for the night."

"All in a good day's work," he joked. "Here, you've got sand in your hair." He brushed it off my forehead and helped me shake my hair out. "You have really nice hair, I don't think anybody tells you that, do they?"

I shrugged. "Meh. My dad tells me that all the time. But, thanks," I said. "You're a really nice guy." One of the party managers was pointing at him, glaring, and calling his name.

"Well, that's what they say. I guess I'm fired, now. See you 'round."

I felt bad; Sept had probably told on him already and he was losing his job. I'd only look like a whore if I said that I had been gone down a deserted beach with Septimus and he tried to force me into sex. It was my word against Sept's, and I knew he'd claim I had tried to seduce him. Jerk off. Rape culture at it's finest.

"I'm sorry," I said, feeling bad. "I didn't mean for this to happen."

"Well that's alright. I can wait tables or something."

"Was this a really good job?" I asked, feeling guilty.

"Yeah, sort of."

"I'm sorry-"

"Hey, if I have to choose between my job or an innocent woman being forced to perform sexual deeds while I ignore it, I'll proudly give up my job without a second thought. Don't you dare feel guilty. There's other jobs out there."

My heart melted. There were still gentlemen on this earth.

"Take care. Bye."

"Bye," I called after him.

I felt really bad for him, but sort of crushed on him a little bit, as I went back to the party. Gender roles were stamped to death in Hamptons society, unfortunately. I wished I had asked his name.

"Alexis," someone sneered from behind me.

I whirled around to see Paige standing there, her eyes narrowed at me. "What the hell were you doing going off with Sept?"

"We went to watch the fireworks. He's not the gentleman he seems, though."

She glared. "First you slut it up with that guy from Copenhagen and then you screw every guy you can get your hands on."

"I did nothing of the sort!" I cried, offended. "Paige-" I realized she had had her eye on Sept and I had just sneaked off with him. She didn't tell me. What was I, psychic? And I had no plans of seducing him, what was her problem? "You can't hold me accountable for something I couldn't know!"

"Don't talk to me," she snapped. "Diana was right about you when you stole Ashley from her. I just never thought you'd do that to me, too."

Ashley had come to me, he hadn't been dating anybody! I had been much more innocent back then, too. Paige whirled around and walked away from me. Well screw that, I didn't need her and her issues.

Old money people were such jerks, sometimes.

As I got towards the pool, Ellington Taylor was so smashed, she had fallen in. Her hair was a soaking wet sop, and dripping into her eyes and her caftan was so wet, it was transparent and see-through. I could see her stretch marks on her stomach and fat rolls. I cringed.

"You'll never work in this town again!" she was telling someone, pointing at them. I saw Karé Baxter. Her hair was darker than I remembered, but she was still just as beautiful as always. She was standing by the poolside, her arms crossed, glaring at Ellington. "I want a better advance and I want to pick out my cover for the next book! How dare you fucking tell me that they've already picked out the cover? Do you even know who I am? E.K. Fucking Taylor, the worldwide queen of erotica! I deserve those things! They're making a movie of my book, and it's going to be a huge, huge hit! You'll be sorry!"

_What a train wreck,_ I thought. _It'll be soft porn at best._

Someone grabbed my elbow. "Alexis?" It was Dad, whispering in my ear. "We're going. I think Kate and I have had our fill tonight."

"I'm ready," I sighed, slipping my cardigan back on. "Let's go."

* * *

_For those of you who don't know, authors rarely get to pick out their book covers and they're considered spoiled douches if they tell their agents that they didn't obtain a big enough advanced. If you're published, it's a __privilege, not a right, and you should be grateful for it. And yes, I am reusing Ben because I'm lazy and don't want to create a new male lead for her._


	4. Chapter 4

_Disclaimer- I still don't own Castle, Andrew Marlowe does, and I don't want him to sue me for playing in his sandbox. I'm just having fun, I make no moneys._

* * *

I had spent most of June completing my manuscript when Dad wasn't looking. I had to make plans for the fall. Dad wanted to pay for my apartment in the Upper West Side near Columbia, but he wanted to put me in a place with a doorman. I had the feeling he wanted to keep tabs on me.

I hadn't spoken to Paige or Diana since that clam bake at Elton John's house. Apparently, a rumor was now circulating about me in the Old Money circle that I was pregnant with the valet's baby, because I screwed him right after giving Sept half a blow job. God, I hated the gossip mill. I was looking forward to getting back to school, at least. Most of my classmates weren't involved in all this BS.

I stopped by the Financial Aid office to see if there were any last-minute scholarships I could apply for. Maybe I could get a small studio apartment of my own in the roach motel Pi and I had lived in last year, if I could just get enough money together.

I looked at my FAFSA form; I didn't qualify for anything asides from work-study and student loans. I had about six thousand in scholarships, but that was it. Auctioning my future off to student loans did not feel like a great idea in this economy. All for what? Letting Dad keep tabs on me? I didn't mind living in the loft for how comfortable it was, but I wanted out of Dad's house as soon as possible. I had been working myself half to death when Pi moved out and only lasted two months. This was not good.

I sighed and walked through the hallway to the lobby and picked up _the Daily Spectator_ to leaf through and get a coffee. I had finished my manuscript, but it needed a good editing. Dad and I both didn't believe in self-editing right away, but I wanted to get on querying this soon, now that Ellington had left Karé officially. I saw it in _Publisher's Weekly._ It looked like Ellington had fallen in the pool in a drunken stupor and dumped Karé as her agent because she thought she was a big deal. She had an opening in her client list, and hopefully, nobody else had gotten the spot of her prize erotica author, yet. The gossip columns had buzzed with the news that E.K. Taylor had already signed with a new agent and had a new project on the way. Not soon enough, I hoped. Ellington was the bigger news, not me and my supposed blow job crimes against mankind.

And then, I saw it on the student activities board; an advertisement for editing from an MFA student at 'reasonable rates'.

Granted, most MFA students that edited outside of their assigned English 101 teaching duties were only anticipating editing papers and term projects, but this one said he'd edit creative writing and dissertation projects, too. I tore off one of the fringes that had the number on it, and called. It rang through to the voicemail.

"_The caller is not available right now_," the robotic voicemail said. "_Please. Leave. A message._" The voicemail beeped.

"Hi, I'm looking for someone to edit my novel-length manuscript for publication and I came across your ad at the Student Union today. It's over a hundred thousand words, and I'm willing to pay a good amount for a reasonable amount of editing." I left my number and hung up.

What luck. I had something to get home soon, I had promised Kate I'd be there for the dinner she was making for us. To be fair, I was trying to get along with my stepmother and give her a fair chance. She wanted to make everything a giant production and she was trying so hard to be a "cool" mom with me and get me to like her. It wasn't so bad, though. I could tell she was insecure because she had never been had stepchildren, let alone been married.

I took the train home to Tribeca and unlocked the door to the Loft. "Hey, I'm home!" I shouted. I might as well wear a cowbell around the house with these two just being married. I saw Kate practically jump backwards, and I realized she and Dad had been making out in the kitchen just now. Ew. Gross.

"Hey, honey!" Dad shouted. "We're almost done with dinner!"

"Can I set the table?" I asked, putting down my bag on the couch.

"We'd appreciate that," Kate said, trying to smooth her hair out. "How was your day?"

"I tried to get some more scholarships," I admitted, getting the plates down from the cabinets.

"You don't need more scholarships, I've got your apartment covered," Dad promised.

"You seriously don't need to spend all that money on student housing for me," I told him. "I'll find a way to make ends meet."

"This is New York. In a bad economy," Dad said. "Minimum wage is stagnating. I just want to help you through."

"I know," I said. "And that's nice, but I need to learn to stand on my own two feet."

"College sucks," Kate admitted. "It's so expensive. It's gotten worse since I was in it fifteen years ago."

"Tell me about it," I said, laying out the place settings. Kate and Dad were moving the serving dishes to the table. I rolled my eyes. "I swear that sometimes, they're just making up things to charge us for."

"Psst, honey, it's okay, I'm loaded," Dad said. I finished folding the napkins and we sat down at the table.

"I know you were preparing to declare your major," Kate said. "Any changes?"

"I'm going with Middle Eastern studies and a minor politics. I may have to get a master's if I want to do anything with it."

Kate glanced at Dad with concern, but he only smiled and pinched her elbow. "We can swing that. Not a problem."

"Is something up?" I asked.

Dad and Kate kept on glancing at each other and she shook her head. "Nope. Nothing."

In my room that night, I saw a text message on my phone from the MFA student.

_I'm available to edit a novel-length manuscript. I assume it's not for school._

I replied,_ No, it's not for school. It's fiction. I'm trying to publish._

A moment later, I got another text. _Can you meet me in the Columbia Student Union Starbucks in the morning?_

_Sure can. Nine o'clock okay?_

_That's fine._

I changed clothes; I had agreed to meet Tara for the Weeks concert in Williamsburg and I wasn't wearing anything concert-appropriate. When I arrived at the club, I saw Tara kissing somebody in one of the back corner booths in the venue. I had no intention of being the third wheel tonight. "Hey, Tars."

She jumped a mile and blushed, breaking off with him. "Oh, Alexis! I didn't think you'd be early!"

"Well, dinner finished early," I replied, tossing down my purse on the other side of the booth. "Hi, I'm Alexis."

"Hi," the man said, blushing. I could tell he was Jewish, too. "Hamich Abernathy. Nice to meet you."

"Same here," I said, sitting down.

"Can I get you a drink?" he asked, standing up.

"A beer would be good," I admitted.

"Anything in particular?"

"A Dos Equis if they don't have any good ambers," I said.

"Coming right up," he ran off to the bar.

"He's pretty cute," I admitted. "Is this the guy from Northeast?"

"Yes," she said, blushing, but sounding pleased at the same time. Tara checked her phone. "So, why is everybody saying you gave Septimus Lindo a blow job but didn't finish, only to run off and fuck the pool boy?"

I rolled my eyes. "Never happened."

"But he said he has witnesses. Namely, Paige."

"Apparently, Paige wanted to hook up with him, but he wanted to hook up with me, instead. He practically sexually assaulted me, if you wanted to know."

"Were you alright?" she asked, concerned.

"Oh, yeah!" I cried, not realizing how terrifying that sounded. "I was saved by a very nice valet. Who got fired because he defended me from Sept. And of course, Sept had him fired before we even got back to the house."

"Sounds like Paige's drama," she muttered. "Making shit up when she doesn't get her way."

"Well, she should have said she had a thing for Sept before introducing us. I just feel bad for the valet that helped me get back to the party. He got fired, I think. Gentlemen are a thing of the past, I guess."

"Not all of us," Hamich said, coming back with three Gaelic Ales.

"Apparently, some of my friends suck," Tara said. "But not Alexis. Never Alexis."

"Of course not," I said. She held out her beer bottle to clink necks with mine in a toast.

I paid for the next round, although Hamich had to buy it. The band started and Tara and I went towards the crowd to see it better, despite being a little drunk. The Weeks started playing. Before I knew it, a guy was crowd surfing, and Tara and I almost got crushed when he was shoved over our heads.

"How's living with your new mom?" Tara shouted over the music.

"Awful! They're doing it all the time and trying to be discrete about it, but for fuck's sake, I can only drown them out with my iPod!"

She laughed, hysterically, gyrating her hips in my direction to the music.

"I swear, Kate's like '_I'm not like other moms, I'm a cool mom!_' with me. It's like living in _Mean Girls_ and if I'm not careful, I'm Regina George!"

Tara sang along with the music and grinding on me. We laughed, because we saw guys watching us. We danced along for a few more songs, and the crowd surfer came back around and almost crushed us again before the guy behind us caught him on his shoulder and lowered him down to the dirty venue floor safely on his back.

"Thanks!" I shouted over the music right as Hamich came up with more beers for us. Something about him looked familiar. "Can I buy you a drink?"

"What?" he shouted.

"A drink! You saved our asses! Thank you!"

"No, you don't buy me drinks, I buy you drinks!"

"If you insist!" I shouted over the music. "You look familiar!"

"I know you! I recognize your hair," he shouted back. "I was your valet in the Hamptons."

"At Elton John's?"

"Yes!"

"Oh my God! You saved my life!"

"No, I just put that jackass in his place."

"What are you doing here?"

"I go to school here." He hadn't shaved in a few days and I thought about the beard burn I'd get from kissing him. Kissing him... mmm... "Well, not here!" He said something and I couldn't understand him.

"What?" I shouted.

"MFA!" he shouted.

"Oh!" I cried.

"Let me get you a drink. What are you drinking?"

I held up my Gaelic Ale.

"Be right back!"

By the time I had had my third beer, he was my new best friend and he asked if he could kiss me. Consent... how did he know how much I loved being asked for consent? We ended up making out in the back of the concert. He had a nice tongue, and wasn't afraid to be gentle with it and tease me. God, he was hot; I felt the sinews of his muscles on his back as we were kissing, and it made me all hot and bothered inside. His eyes were so light...

When the band did their last encore, he asked me to come home with him.

"My apartment's two blocks away. It's not far," he said in my ear.

I thought about it. "Yeah?"

"Just a short walk."

"I don't know your name."

"It's Ben. What's yours?"

"Alexis."

"You know the joke, right?" he asked, smirking.

"My father could have had a car or a daughter, so he had Alexis? Ha ha. I've never heard that before," I said, although I was grinning. "I've never gone home with a guy I just met. Really, I haven't."

"But we didn't just meet," he pointed out. "I'll be gentle."

"I don't need gentle." I kissed the end of his nose. "'l'll be right back."

I found Tara and Hamich, who were holding hands and murmuring in each other's ears. "Hey," I said.

"What? Where's your new toy?" Tara asked, looking trashed. Her eyes were glassy.

"I've got a ride home," I said.

"Good!" she cried, Hamich pulling her arm.

"I'll see you tomorrow?" I asked.

"You're going home with him?" she asked surprised. "Slut!"

"You're the slut first!"

"Well, have a good time!"

"I will! You too!" I shouted, pointing at her as I walked away to find Ben. "Hi!" I shouted taking his hands. "Come on!"

We ended up making out halfway to his place, and started getting foreplay out of the way. By the time we got to his apartment building, I had my legs wrapped around his middle and he was carrying me into the apartment. "If we're going to do this, you've got a condom, right?" I asked.

"Of course," he said, twisting the doorknob behind him and carrying me inside. He put me down and pulled down the Murphy bed in the wall. I pulled the bow on my halter top of my dress, letting it pool to the floor. His eyelids got heavy as I reached behind my own back and unhooked my strapless bra, tossing it away, across the room. He moaned softly at the sight of me and pulled me close to kiss me again. "You're so beautiful," he muttered. I liked how I felt when he looked at me. I felt that way with Pi for a short period of time, then he didn't care if I pranced around in lingerie or my panties around the apartment. Ben was different.

We had sex and it felt like being underwater. He kept on checking in on me, asking if I liked what he was doing, if I wanted to keep going, and I was so turned on by that, I had an orgasm. I hadn't had an orgasm with a partner before. Afterwards, he got out a joint and lit it, handing it to me. I was relaxing in post-coital bliss when the front door open. A guy walked in and I grabbed the sheet to cover up.

"Whoa. Sorry, bro!" the guy cried.

"This is my roommate, Merritt," Ben said.

"Hey," I said, waving with one hand, holding up the sheet with the other.

"There wasn't a sock on the door," he apologized. "That's our sign!"

"My bad."

"It's okay," I said, looking around for my dress from the bed. "Shit happens. I'm Alexis."

"Nice to meet you. I'm going to hide out in the bedroom."

"Thanks," I said.

When the bedroom door shut, got out of bed to find my underwear and dress in the darkness.

"I've gotta go," I said to Ben.

"What? Babe, you just got here! Don't you want to take a shower?"

"I'm staying with my parents this summer, they're kind of expecting me."

"Stay the night."

"No," I said, pulling the dress on over my head. I tied it off behind my neck. "Maybe I'll see you around town. Where do you go?"

"Columbia."

I sighed. "That's where you go? I go there, too!"

He grabbed my hand and kissed my palm. "I'll see you there?"

"Yes."

"Can I walk you to the subway?"

"If you don't mind losing sleep, sure."

He got up and got dressed. We held hands on the walk to the subway station. "You don't mind walking me all this way?" I asked.

"No, not at all."

"Don't you have work tomorrow or something?"

"I do, but so what?"

"What do you do?"

"Serving. That and a few other odd jobs here and there. My stipends don't start until August. I gotta do something."

"I know. I want an apartment of my own, but the rates suck."

"New York is tough for a student to live in," he agreed. We got to the subway stop.

"I'll get home from here," I said. "Bye, Ben."

"Bye."

I took the subway to Manhattan and changed lines to Tribeca, and got home around two-thirty in the morning. I had to take a shower before bed. I'd try to be as quiet as possible.

I slipped in the door and tried to be silent in locking it behind me. At this point, I was getting thirsty and I had sobered up, but was still a little high. I went to the kitchen to get some water, but almost dropped the bottle when I turned around and Kate was standing there in her pajamas.

"I thought that was you. It's really late!"

"We just stayed out," I lied. She didn't have to know I had slept with a Hamptons valet tonight. Well, former valet.

"I couldn't sleep," she admitted. "Did you enjoy the show?"

"Yeah, sure did."

"Honey, I think you've broken out. You didn't eat something you're allergic to, did you?"

"I- I don't think so," I blushed and realized I had beard burn.

"Do you need a benadryl?" she asked.

"I've got some in my bathroom. Thanks though. I'm going to bed."

"Well, see you in the morning."


	5. Chapter 5

_Disclaimer- I still don't own Castle, Andrew Marlowe does, and I don't want him to sue me for playing in his sandbox. _

* * *

I woke up in the morning to find that Dad and Kate had gone on to work already. I didn't get any coffee or breakfast, I just barely ran out the door with fresh clothes, make-up, and my teeth brushed and caught the train to Harlem. The beard burn had died down, luckily, and I was able to cover it up with some concealer.

At the Student Union building, I ordered a Venti Coffee from Starbucks and took a seat in one of the booths. The first gulp of coffee was like ambrosia. I sighed and relaxed a bit and then checked my phone; it was already six after nine. I sent the editor another text message;

_I'm sitting in a booth in the SU's Starbucks._

I swallowed another mouthful of coffee and opened my laptop. I had compiled the manuscript and it was in shape to be edited. A messenger bag was set down on the table. I looked up and saw Ben standing there. "So you've got a novel you want me to edit?"

* * *

"You've written an erotica novel that needs editing and you trust me to do it?"

"I'm desperate to get published on my own credits," I said. "And soon. I know an agent who's looking for an erotica author and I don't want another one to get the spot on her client roster. I really, really want into the publishing world, but on my own."

"Let me guess, you've got an 'in' with the publishing world that you don't want."

"Yes, I do. And I don't want it because I don't want it following me around for the rest of my life. I want to do it on my own."

"What I wouldn't do for an 'in'."

I shrugged. "I need complete and total confidentiality. I don't want anybody knowing it's me unless it's absolutely necessary."

"What kind of an 'in' do you have?"

I bit my lips together. "I know we didn't exchange last names last night."

He raised an eyebrow.

I grimaced. "Castle."

"Not…"

"Yes, as in Richard Castle. He's my father."

He nodded, tapping the side of his coffee. "That's definitely an 'in'."

"He knows most of the professors here at Columbia. The ones that will most likely be your professors."

"Shit."

"So yeah, you better stay silent. At least until you've gotten your MFA and gotten out of here."

He gulped down a large mouthful of coffee. "Yeah, I better not."

"So you'll edit me?"

"Give me a sample chapter, and I'll decide."

"I don't have it printed out."

He tapped my laptop and I turned it around for him. It made me nervous as he started reading, but the anticipation made it even worse. I picked up my coffee and walked away to give him some privacy. I glanced back a few times to see a smirk on his face as he read. I checked back again, and he was chuckling to himself.

"What's the verdict?" I asked, sitting down across from him as he shut my laptop.

"I don't take on every novel-length manuscript, but I've decided I'll take on yours. There was some humor in it, which I appreciate. As long as Rowena's not a weak-willed codependent pussy, and Colton's not a domineering, abusive asshole, I'll take it on."

"How much?"

"Eight hundred."

"What?" I cried, surprised.

"Eight hundred and I'll do a grammar and big picture edit. That's less than one cent per word. I dare you to find a better deal from a person with a master's in English. Anywhere"

I sighed.

"You get what you pay for," he reminded me. "And this is bare-bones pricing."

"Fine. I'll come by your house with an eight-hundred dollar check of my own money tonight."

"Good. Send me the entire manuscript and we'll get started."

* * *

I had to get money out of my savings account and put it into a cashier's check so that it didn't have my name on it. After dinner, I took the train to Williamsburg. I could hardly remember his apartment number, I sent him a text it was the four floor, number 46.

"Hi," Ben said, answering. He was only wearing a pair of boxer shorts and he looked a little stoned. "Come in."

I hardly recognized the apartment in the light. There was a smoking joint on the ashtray in on the coffee table beside his laptop and the apartment wasn't air conditioned.

"I've already been editing," he said. "Wanna see?"

"You edit while high?"

"I write everything high, why should my editing be any different?"

"Fine." I sat down on the couch and read over what he had done.

He was brilliant. "Whoa," I muttered.

"I'm keeping the purple prose in there, I guess that's kind of needed, but I'll probably have this finished in a few days. Why don't you have a critique partner?"

"Because I don't like anybody knowing I write."

"If I had a dad like yours to live up to, I'd keep writing a secret, too."

I handed him the check. "Here you are. Eight hundred even."

"Thanks," he replied, going to the kitchen with it.

"I'm going to head out."

"You don't want to stay?"

I shook my head. "No. I don't want to distract you."

"Alright, then," he said. "I'll email you."

* * *

"Well, he hasn't called me," Tara said, fidgeting with her coffee cup.

"He hasn't?" I asked. "Aw. Well, it's only been a night."

"I know," she said. "But I really like him."

"Did you sleep with him?"

She blushed. "Did you?"

"Yes."

"We're sluts, aren't we?"

"I guess so. First one night stand," I shrugged. "Well… he's a nice guy. Maybe he'll call me. I don't think he will, though." Not for sex, at least.

"I guess this is rite of passage in college, the first one-night stand."

"I guess so."

I got a text from Dad. "Just a second."

_You aren't staying out really, really late tonight, are you?_

I sighed. "My Dad doesn't want me staying out. See why I want an apartment of my own? That he doesn't pay for?"

"Yes. But you don't have a Jewish mother ragging you all the time."

_Last night time just got away from me. I'll be in before 1._

"Well, I know Kate wants to lay down rules but is scared to because she doesn't want me not liking her. I know she pressured Dad into sending this message just now." I showed her the text Dad sent me.

"Yeah, she definitely wants to be your friend. I can tell."

"Isn't that the curse of all stepmothers? Not wanting to be hated by their new husband's offspring?" My phone dinged again.

_I need a yes or no. You woke Kate up last night and she never got back to sleep._

_And one am is not ok. This is a family home, you can't just come & go as you please._

I sighed. "She's using Dad to guilt me into coming home early."

Tara rolled her eyes.

"Well, I guess I'm heading home. Dad is going to keep ragging me until I get in."

"Alright, bye, girl!"

I trudged down to the subway stop and took the train to Tribeca. Dad and Kate were sitting on the couch together, watching Jimmy Kimmel, Dad was drinking a beer. "Hi, Honey!" Dad said. "I wasn't expecting you home _this_ early!"

"I'm trying to get back into the swing of things before the semester starts," I said. "I'll give you guys some privacy."

"No, wait!" Dad cried. "Wait. Wait a second. We need to talk about something."

I internally groaned. Kate didn't like me waking her up in the middle of the night and Dad was going to tell me that I needed to be respectful of everyone else in this house, blah blah blabbity blah…

"Sit down," Kate said. "Can I get you something to drink?"

"No, I'm fine."

"Well, honey, um, you know how we got married and… we're a family with Kate, now."

I nodded.

"And families come in all different shapes and sizes…"

"Are you going to tell me that coming in really late is really disrespectful because I'm waking Kate up?"

Kate bristled. "No, we're not telling you that. We're pregnant," she blurted out.

"Oh."

Pregnant. I knew that word... That meant Kate was having a baby and that meant…

"How long have you known?" I asked.

"We knew," Dad said, "at the wedding."

"I'm going to start showing soon," Kate said. She rubbed her stomach. How had I missed this? She was rubbing her stomach constantly. "And since this is your baby brother or sister, I thought I owed you an explanation before everybody else found out."

"How far along are you?"

"I just finished my first trimester this week."

"Oh."

"Yeah. We're due in December," Dad said, squeezing Kate's hand.

"This is going to be a huge change for me," I admitted. "I didn't think you wanted kids."

"I've been on the fence about it for the last year," Kate admitted. "Getting pregnant kind of made up my mind for me."

I remember saying, _if you have kids, Pi and I will be having kids, and we can raise them together!_ to which Dad said, _aaaaand that kills it. _I didn't think it would be happening so soon.

"This has just happened so fast…" I admitted, unsure what to think. "I don't know what to think."

"I know, that's been my reaction," Kate said. Her stomach was mostly flat, still.

"Are you telling everybody?"

"Not yet. At least until I can't hide it anymore."

"We told your grandmother this morning."

"And my dad," Kate said.

"We want to tell the people closest to us before we tell the world," Dad said. "So... we'd appreciate it if you'd keep it under wraps for a while."

"How does this affect your job?" I asked.

Kate shrugged. "I'm trying to take it easy right now. Ryan and Espo know."

"Oh, okay." I felt uneasy asking this. "Does this affect my education?"

"No! No, honey, it doesn't! I've got an education savings fund in your name, like I've had all your life. We can make this work. Money's not an issue."

I sighed in relief and nodded. "Okay. Good."

"And don't think we're going to pressure you into baby-sitting at all times," Kate said. "We promise. We're not going to do that to you. We're going to respect you if you say you can't take care of our kid. But we really want you in his or her life."

"Thanks," I said, not sure. Promises meant nothing, I knew that all too well. "I want to be in the baby's life too. I don't want to be a stranger."

"I know," Kate said softly. "I'm glad."

"This is going to be so weird, having a baby sibling twenty years younger than me."

"Well, like we said," Dad began, "families come in all shapes and sizes."


	6. Chapter 6

_Disclaimer- I still don't own Castle, Andrew Marlowe does, and I don't want him to sue me for playing in his sandbox._

* * *

I wanted so badly to tell my friends that Kate was having a baby, but I had promised. And while everybody around me didn't take their promises seriously, I did. The lesson Grams taught me at an early age was that life wasn't fair, but that didn't mean I had to be. It was so hard not to bring it up with Tara, or any of our other friends that were still in town for the summer; Jules and Nina. Jules had been doing an internship in Chicago and Nina had been to Italy to see family. We found a spot in SoHo where we could dance until 4 in the morning the weekend they came home. And I did that night; we ended up crashing and Nina's apartment. Her parents lived in a palatial estate in New Jersey most of the time, but since she was a sophomore at Marlowe Prep with us, they had rented an apartment for her to live in on the Upper West Side.

That morning, I woke up a little hung over and in my bra and panties. I had crashed on the living room's floor under a blanket. I searched out a t-shirt and finally found one so I could go to the kitchen and start some coffee. My purse was on the kitchen counter, and I got out my phone.

There was a message from Ben that he had emailed me the edits on my manuscript.

I wanted to find my clothes and dash out of here to get home, but I knew better; my friends wouldn't like it if I did that.

When my friends woke up, we made breakfast and we went our separate ways, but as Tara and I left, her phone dinged and she gasped when she saw the sender. "It's Hamich!" she cried.

"He texted you? What does it say?"

"He'd like to see me before I leave for Boston!" she squealed and danced around beside me. "Did you hear back from…"

"From Ben?" I asked. "He's not interested in me. Like, long-term."

"You don't know that! Unless he said it!"

"Well, we sort of agreed. A lot's changing for both of us. And he's a little weirded out by my father's money."

"Wow, our money works against us."

"I know."

"Well, this is my stop. I'll see you later! Love you!" We air-kissed each other's cheeks and she took the subway to her apartment building. I walked down to my stop and went down to Tribeca.

"I'm home!" I shouted, opening the door. "Dad? Kate?"

"We're in here," Dad called from the kitchen. "You stayed at Nina's?"

"Yes, we stayed out too late, I didn't want to wake anybody up when I got in."

"How was your night?" Kate asked.

"We danced and I met a few nice guys. I gave them my number, like a lady."

"I wish you wouldn't do that," Dad sang warningly.

"Why not?"

"Because people might misuse that information," he explained. "That's one step short of giving them your address."

I sighed. "I'm not staying here much longer," I mumbled.

"Well, we're heading out to work. I hope you have a good day. Enjoy your summer vacation while it lasts," Kate said. "It all ends when you graduate." She was constantly rubbing her stomach, so it was obvious she was pregnant by now, even though she just barely had a little lump in her lower stomach. She just looked a little bloated. Dad said when the gossip columns started talking about it, they'd admit it. I gave them a month.

"Have a good day," I said, "I'm going to take a shower and go to look at apartments today, okay?"

"Make sure they're not walk-ups, they're not safe," Dad reminded me as they walked out the door.

I rushed upstairs to get to my laptop to Ben's response.

I was thankful he had agreed to edit for me. And yes, it was pretty cheap and quick, but we'd see if it was any good.

_Alexis,_

_OK, I read this whole thing- twice. And I actually liked the characters. While this porny, the scenes where they were having sex didn't seem redundant, like I was expecting. I did feel that there was a little bit of plot growing in here, which was surprising. I think you've really got a chance here. But you know that my editing doesn't guarantee you'll get picked up by an agent or that you'll get published. It's up to you._

_I hope this is what you were looking for in editing. And yes, a couple of things Colton said were things a dude would never say, and I made note of it. Keep in mind that men don't talk that much unless they're talking about sports, guns, or women. If you don't like what I've done for editing, bite my ass. I've already blown all that check you paid me with on a giant bag o' weed and I'm not sharing a single bud._

_Asides from that, I did like what you wrote. I think you are a talented writer, and I wish you'd actually tell your father that you like writing and can actually do it. He might actually be proud of you._

_Best wishes and good luck,_

_Ben Haversham_

I sat down and began the boring process of editing my manuscript.

* * *

Two and a half weeks later, I had dragged myself through the toughest editing notes I had ever gotten before. Some of the notes sucked to realize, others were obvious. I finally polished and worked on my manuscript until I felt like things were good.

I emailed Karé that night, but it wasn't a query letter.

_Karé,_

_I saw what happened at Elton John's party, and I'm sorry about that. I'm glad you wrote me personally and gave me some advice on how to break into the industry without using my Dad's name, and I think I've come up with something that works._

_This was just finished with editing this, and I think it's worth a look. It's called_ Benefits_, and it's just an erotica novel. I hope this has potential, I'm offering it to you first because I trust you._

_Let me know if you're interested. I hope to hear from you soon,_  
_Alexis_

I went downstairs for some more tea.

"She finally emerges!" Dad joked. "What's with all the hibernation, honey? You've wasted the last few weeks of summer and we still don't have an apartment for you."

"I know," I said. "Just a private project."

"You know how hard it is to get an apartment in New York, don't you?" Kate asked. She was starting to look a little pregnant now, but a flowy shirt could disguise it and make it look like her boobs were bigger. Right now, she was eating part of a sandwich.

"What about yours?" Dad asked. "Isn't it sitting empty right now? It has been since the wedding."

Kate stopped chewing.

"Oh no…" she said. "That apartment, it's not a college student apartment."

"You don't want me living in your place?"

"It's a lot of apartment for a single girl. At least, for a college girl. And the rent on it is least two-thousand a month!"

"But it's empty," I said.

"And Alexis is very responsible," Dad noted.

Kate frowned. "Are we really going to let her move in there?" she asked.

"It's a good idea. The apartment's sort of going to waste being empty," Dad said.

"And I won't throw parties in it," I said. "I swear!"

Kate grimaced. "I loved that apartment," she admitted. "Are you sure you'll keep it clean?"

"I can do that!" I cried, surprised she didn't trust me. "You don't trust me?"

"I do… I guess."

"I tell you what;" Dad began. "I'll put the money in your account, and you'll be responsible for paying the bills every month. It'll help you break into adulthood."

"I'm an adult already."

"Living in your dad's house…" he teased.

Kate and I exchanged a glance. "Isn't that what college is all about?" she asked. "But maybe, yes, this might be a good money-handling exercise for Alexis."

"I'll do it," I said, shrugging.

"Then we agree; Alexis moves into your old place," Dad said.

That night, when I went back to my room, I saw that Karé had written me back already, wanting to read _Benefits_. I sent her an attachment right away and turned out the lights. Who knew if it was any good?

* * *

Most of Kate's furniture was left in her apartment, so moving was just bring some of my stuff from my room in and getting my clothes in.

"So many of my friends got married and had to consolidate their places. Whenever one of them got into a new relationship, I'd tell them not to buy a new couch, because it was like ensuring they'd get engaged and have to consolidate their apartments," Kate said. "I was planning on giving away all my furniture when I got engaged. I'm comfortable with this, now. I've thought about it, and it's okay."

"I'm glad," I said. "And I will be respectful of your things, alright?"

"You know what?" Kate said. "It's just stuff. From my old, single life. I'm married, and all the things I need are at the Loft and with me. I'm fine with giving this stuff up. It's just stuff. If it gets trashed, I'll be mad at you for making a mess, but I won't be mad to lose it all. It's yours, now. The furniture, the appliances, the books, they're yours, Alexis. This is my gift to you."

"I'm proud of you," Dad said, kissing her on the cheek and squeezing her.

I was just happy I wouldn't have to listen to them getting horizontal anymore.

It felt so good when Dad, Grams, and Kate were done helping me set up and I had Kate's apartment to myself. The cable and internet would be set up soon, but in the mean time, I got my iPad out and checked my email.

Surprisingly, Karé had written me back.

_Alexis,_

_You know that Ellington left my agency with a lot of fanfare and drama, and you saw it. She hasn't been too kind to me online, either. I read_ Benefits,_ and I am so, so excited about it. I don't say this often, but I'm saying it now; I want to represent it. Under a penname, of course. Don't you dare let anybody else see this! I know editors at all the major publishing houses that would love it. I think I can get a decent advance for you on it. Let me know if you're interested._

_Karé_

_PS: Whoever edited for you was fantastic._

I had an offer of representation. How was this possible? I wrote back as best as I could on my iPad.

_Karé,_

_I've been moving and I don't quite have the internet up, yet, sorry if it took me a few days to get back to you, but yes, I would love to be represented by you! Let me know the next steps._

_Alexis_

I danced and squealed in the living room, turning up Muse on the iHome stereo.

And then it hit me; I couldn't share my good news with my friends or family. I sat down on the couch and sighed. Grams had brought and left a few bottles of wine. People celebrated with a good drink, didn't they? I uncorked the wine and poured it into one of the red wine glasses, and stared at the reflection in the burgundy liquid.

Somebody did know about this, though. Ben.

I called him, hoping he'd be available. Instead, I got his voicemail.

"Hey Ben," I said, setting down the wine to flop down on the couch. "I just got an offer of representation for _Benefits_. And I can't tell anybody about it but you, because you're the only other person who knows I wrote it asides from my new agent. And I was hoping you weren't busy tonight and wanted to celebrate. Of course, you're probably busy, but I just wanted to let you know. Bye."

I took a long, hot bath (my bathroom at the Loft didn't have a bathtub, it was a shower stall) and finished the bottle of wine. Right as I was pulling the bathtub plug, I heard my phone ring. I ran into the living room to answer it, grabbing a towel on the way. I missed the call, but got a text a moment later; both were from Ben.

_Proud of you. And I'm getting off from the restaurant at eleven, I'll be in Manhattan. Wanna go out?_

I was excited he wanted to do something with me, but I was already pretty trashed.

_Sorry. I've been getting trashed all night and don't feel like going out now. Unless you want to come over?_

A moment later, I got a response.

_Where do you live? And do you need me to bring a rubber?_

I grinned at the message.

_Here's the address. And yes to the condom._

* * *

About half past eleven, I was falling asleep on the bed when I heard the doorbuzzer. I got up from the couch, and answered.

"Hey, it's me, Ben."

"Come on up," I said, unlocking the door.

There was some make-up under my eyes, but just enough that I barely noticed it. I had dressed in my pajamas, but that was good enough. I made sure the throw blanket I had been sleeping under had been folded when the door opened.

"Nice apartment," Ben noted.

"It's my stepmom's," I admitted. "I'm living here for the year."

"It's a little too nice, you know?" he admitted. "But you're lucky to have it." He stepped up to me and slipped an arm around my lower back. "Congratulations on your book. I knew it was something special."

"I haven't sold it, yet."

"Just getting an agent is a big deal," he said, leaning in. "Can I kiss you?" I nodded eagerly, and he did. I hadn't been too drunk that night at the Weeks concert; he really was a good kisser, it wasn't just in my head. "I'm proud of you."

"Thanks," I whispered before he kissed me again. "I couldn't have done it without you."

After we went back to the bedroom to fool around and had sex, he broke out a plastic baggie of joints and we lit up.

"Is this some of the weed you bought with that paycheck?" I teased, exhaling.

"No. I was just kidding about that. I paid most of my rent with that."

I chuckled. "I'm happy you're here," I said.

"Have you decided on a pen name?" he asked.

"No. Not yet."

"We need to come up with one."

"Alright, go."

"What, me?"

"Yes, you! What kind of penname do you think I need? Give me some ideas!"

"Candace."

"Candace?" I repeated, surprised.

"That doesn't sound like a good name?"

"It's just not sexy."

"The name Candi is sexy."

"No, it's not," I said, rolling my eyes. "It's not mature or glamorous or sexy."

"Candace is," he said.

"Why do you say that?"

He blushed. "The first girl I ever slept with was named Candace. Nevermind."

"Oh, you're kidding!" I cried, laughing.

"I was fifteen, she was seventeen and went to Harpeth Hall in Nashville. She was a family friend of Reese Witherspoon's family. She thought she was a big deal."

"Is that where you're from?"

"Nashville? Yeah. Well, actually, I'm from Lebanon, it's north of Nashville. I was a scholarship kid to Montgomery Bell Academy."

"That sounds so southern!"

"It is, trust me," he chuckled. He had a few lumps on his skin that looked like scar tissue on his back and one of his sides. His left arm was covered in a sleeve of tattoos, among random sporadic ones across his body. He even had a tattoo of a star too, on his side under his ribs. I examined that tattoo with my fingers.

"You don't have any tattoos," he said, picking my fingers up to kiss them.

"No, I don't," I sighed. "I keep saying I'll get one."

"What kind?"

"Um… it varies," I said, grimacing. "I used to want a soccer ball tattoo when I played soccer, in high school, I wanted a butterfly, but everybody got a butterfly tattoo. And now that I'm in college, I don't know."

"What about an open book?"

I thought about it. It was a marker of my life. A tattoo that designated a big change in my life. "Let's do it."

"It's not too late. It's only half past midnight," he said, sitting up in bed. "I bet there's a tattoo parlour open somewhere in Manhattan." He got out and grabbed his pants, fishing out a cell phone. I got out of bed and pulled my pajamas back on. "Here, found one. Tattoo Nightmare on Broadway."

That was a tattoo parlour that had it's own reality TV show where they corrected and covered up bad tattoos. "I don't want to be on TV," I said. "At least for this."

"I doubt they're filming," he said, hitting the send button, pacing the bedroom naked. I felt myself drooling. "Hi, how late are you open tonight?... Three-thirty? Can you do a small tattoo for a tattoo virgin?... Alright! We'll be by in a moment!" He hung up. "We gotta get dressed, they're waiting on us!"

* * *

I was scared to death of what was going to put on my body and where. I didn't want it haunting me later in life and I didn't want to regret it, either. I shivered.

"Where are you gonna get it?" the artist asked. He was a thinner guy, covered in tattoos across his neck, chest, and arms. I'm sure there were more under his clothes.

I grimaced. "The back of my wrist?" I suggested.

He indicated for me to show him my wrist, so I held out my right hand. He examined it. "Give me a minute and I'll design it." He went into the back.

"It hurts, right?" I asked Ben.

He shrugged. "It's like a rubber band snapping against your skin, but it's not so bad if you're getting it on a really fat-padded area. But if you get it on your joint, like your wrist… ouch."

I shivered. "I'm getting nervous."

"Do you want me to bring you a beer or something?"

I shrugged and wriggled a bit.

"Miss Castle?" the artist came out from the back.

"Yes!" I cried, shooting to my feet.

"Here, let me show you what I've done." He showed me the design. It was bigger than I thought, but a basic drawing of an open book. "What do you think?" he asked.

"It's kind of big."

"If it's any smaller, it'll get blurry after a while." He held the guide paper over my wrist. "See how it'll fit?"

I had a bit of fear at it not being exactly what I wanted, but tried to swallow that down.

"You'll learn to like it," Ben offered. "If you think the tattoos you like are always changing, they always will. Just get something you like right now and stick with it."

"Alright," I agreed. "Alright, let's do this. Can he come back with me?"

"One person, yes," the artist agreed.

In the back, he put down the paper on my wrist and peeled it off; there was a purple outline of the book. "Alright," he said.

"Ben, hold my hand!" I cried. "Now!"

He grabbed my hand and the artist brought the needle to my skin. "Try not to move," he instructed. I squealed, and Ben wasn't lying; it did feel like a rubber band snapped against my skin as the needle drove in repeatedly.

"You're alright, right?" Ben asked.

"Yes, I'm okay," I replied, my nerves rising.

"You're really tense," the artist noted.

"I know."

Afterwards, the artist spread some iodine on the tattoo and then taped a paper towel over it after I got to see it. He gave me a list of things not to do and how to care for my tattoo until it healed. "Well, that was fun," I joked.

"Thanks," Ben told the artist. "I'll make sure she takes care of it the right way."

"You two have a good night," the artist replied.

Ben took my hand and guided me out of the parlour.

"Do you want to spend the night?" I asked him. "You're already in Manhattan."

"A drink, first," Ben said.

We stopped at a bar and had a beer.

"You've got your first tattoo, now," he noted.

"I'm afraid my Dad will freak out if he sees it," I admitted.

"It's gonna be hard to hide," he pointed out.

"So what about yours?" I asked.

"Tons of stories," he said.

"The sleeve?" I asked.

He rolled his shirt sleeve back and showed me the beautiful artwork on his skin. It was so colorful and I saw the American flag flying beside the Union Jack. I had never really focused on it, he was always wearing long-sleeve button-up shirts that covered his forearm.

"What is that?" I asked, pointing at it. "What does it mean?"

"My father's British, actually. Was."

"He'd dead?" I asked.

"Yes. My mom passed away a while back, too. I joined the marines to get my mind off it."

"I remember you telling Sept you were a marine."

He shrugged. "Well, Marines are good at what they do, but don't really think that much. We're not even allowed to use 'I' or 'me' when talking. It was 'this recruit' or 'this marine's whatever'."

"What were you running from?"

"Myself," he shrugged. "I got hit by shrapnel and it ended my career."

"Do you ever see Candace, friend of Reese Witherspoon's, now?"

"No, she's married, popped out a couple of puppies by now. I guess she was slummin' it with me. Rich girls do."

That kind of stung. "Do you think I'm slumming it with you?" I asked.

He grimaced. "I didn't mean that you do. Maybe I'm just attracted to intelligent women with good educations. And these days, only rich people can provide that for their daughters."

"Well, as long as I need you as my editor, we cannot be having sex. We are just friends. Occasional fuck buddies, but most of all, friends."

"I can live with that."

I took a sip of my beer and it hit me. "I know my penname!" I cried. "Candace Witherspoon!"

"Oh, now that's just mean!"


	7. Chapter 7

_Disclaimer- I still don't own Castle, Andrew Marlowe does, and I don't want him to sue me for playing in his sandbox. I'm just having fun, I make no moneys._

* * *

It was when I came home from school to have dinner at Dad's loft that I saw Kate for the first time in three weeks; she was showing, now. "Wow," I said when I answered the door.

"I've gained too much weight," she muttered, frowning.

"No, you're just…. showing!" I cried, stepping into the apartment. "I feel like I just left!"

"I guess we've got to come out about it," she muttered glumly. "I can't fit into my bullet-proof vest anymore." She rubbed her stomach, which was now poking out.

"If you'd stop rubbing your stomach, you wouldn't give it away so much," I suggested.

"I hope you get really fat when you have a baby," she replied. "And know my pain."

"No, she doesn't, it's the hormones talking," Dad said from the kitchen. At least I wasn't catching them dry-humping outside the bedroom these days, due to lack of my interaction with them.

"Hi, Dad," I said.

"Hi, Alexis. How's school been?"

"Busy," I admitted. "Sorry I haven't been around much."

"Everything's okay at the apartment?"

"It's fine. I'm budgeting and using my money well. The deadbolt broke, but the super fixed it."

"Sounds like it's going well for you."

"It is," I admitted. "Thank you for getting me live there, Kate."

"You're welcome," she replied.

"Can I help with the table settings?" I asked.

"Go for it," Dad said.

A moment later, Grams came in the door.

"Hello! Where's my granddaughter?" she sang out.

"Here!" I called, putting down the utensils. "Hi!"

"Hello, darling!" she said, hugging and kissing me, carefully holding a bottle of wine. "I want to hear all about school this semester. Don't skip anything!"

I was going to skip the sex I was occasionally having with Ben and waiting on Kare to sell my book. She had it out on submission. "I'm working hard. I think I'm going to kill someone in my study group for Accounting, but other than that, I'm always working or studying."

"I understand," Dad said. "That's what college is. Let's all sit down and enjoy a meal."

Kate filled us all in on the progress of the baby. They had come up with baby names, including a few that had great writer names. I had been there for the second trimester ultrasound, where we discovered the baby was a boy. She was having problems with heartburn and had to pee all the time, and it was only getting worse. I kind of liked being around her these days; now that I didn't have to be grossed out by her and Dad having sex where I could hear it anymore, she actually was being a cool mom/mother figure. I guess she was getting the hang of it.

"I can't wait for this to be over. I can't imagine getting any bigger than I already am," Kate moaned.

"Oh, you're only in your sixth month, you will get bigger. Much bigger," Grams assured her.

Double-up on contraception, I noted in my head.

I heard my phone ding in my purse. I knew not to get that, Dad hated it when I checked my phone at the dinner table.

"Whose phone was that?" Kate asked.

"Mine, I think."

"Leave it alone," Dad warned. "If it were really important, they'd call."

I reached for the rice and Dad grabbed my hand. I realized that this was the hand with the tattoo on it and I forgot to wear a cuff bracelet over it. "Hey!" I cried.

"What is this?" he shouted. "You got a tattoo!"

"Yes!" I shouted back.

Kate burst out laughing. "I have a tattoo, Castle," she purred. "You think it's sexy."

"I started my sleeve," I said as seriously as possible.

Kate laughed harder.

"Let me see that!" Grams cried, grabbing my hand. "Psh! It's just a book! It's not like it's a naked woman or a penis, Richard. You've got a tattoo on your rear end, too, don't talk to her like that."

"My baby- my baby's got a tattoo!"

"That's the one you can see," I teased.

"Twist the knife in my heart!" Dad joked. "I can't believe you got a tattoo! You know how much it costs to remove those?"

"Who says I wanna remove it?" I snarked back. "It's old news, I got it the night I moved into Kate's apartment!"

"Old news," Dad muttered, shaking his head.

"Well, my big news is; I'm being considered for a Broadway role," Grams said.

"What?" I cried.  
"I'm so proud of you," Dad cried, grinning. "What is it?"

"They're turning the movie H_ocus Pocus_ into a broadway musical, and they're considering me for the lead," Grams said, beaming. "Bette Middler declined to take the part of Winnifred Sanderson back up, and they're looking for a… mature redhead with a stage presence and experience! And what luck, my agent suggested me!"

"Hocus Pocus?" I repeated. "We love that movie! We watch it every Halloween!"

"Okay, I've never seen it," Kate admitted.

"You haven't?" I asked, shocked.

"No," Kate admitted.

"Alright, I know what we're doing after dinner," I said.

"I don't have the part, yet," Grams said. "but I have a real good feeling about this one."

* * *

After dinner, I forced Kate to watch _Hocus Pocus_ with Grams and me, and we sang our rendition of I put a Spell On You. Kate tried not to look entertained, but bored. I knew she liked it, deep down.

"I miss having a TV," I admitted.

"I didn't," Kate noted.

"It's a good thing," Dad said, helping Kate up from the couch. "It'll help you focus on the important things more; like school."

"I know," I said, getting my jacket. "I'm going home. Thanks for having me for dinner."

"It was good to see you again, honey. Don't forget the Halloween party in a few weeks."

"And don't forget about the third trimester ultrasound, too!" Kate called after me as I walked out into the hallway. I opened my phone and saw three text messages from Karé. As I waited for the elevator, I opened them.

_You need to call me. Right now._

_I've got some good news._

_Okay, I sold_ Benefits,_ but you have to ask me how much for._

I dialed her number.

"Alexis?" she answered.

"Hi, Karé, I was just at a family dinner," I said.

"Are you still at your dad's?"

"No, I'm not."

"I was going to tell you tell him hi from me."

"Bad idea, he doesn't know you represent something I wrote."

"Well, about that; I sold it today."

"You what?" I cried, stopping in the sidewalk outside Dad's building.

"I sold it. Three books for… two hundred thousand."

I stumbled. "What?" I cried. In all my years of reading Dad's copies of _Publisher's Weekly,_ it was a complete rarity for a debut author that was not a celebrity to make a six-figure deal. Dad only got a hundred thousand for his first book.

"Two hundred thousand," she repeated.

"How… what…"

"You have two more years to write two more books in the series, like we talked about, but I found an editor at Harper-Collins' Erotica Imprint that liked what you wrote. And they want to publish it."

I squealed in the streets. "You're kidding! That's amazing! That's great! That's… a lot of money!" I panicked. I was going to have to pay taxes on that money, something I didn't know a lot about. How was I going to do this without my father's help? "What am I going to do?"

"I'll take care of taxes and social security and a depositing money into a 401K. You just get to work on editing this one and writing the sequel."

I gasped. "I don't know how I'm going to… do that…" my voice trailed off.

"Colton and Rowena are going to be something big, just you wait."

* * *

I called Ben immediately to ask him over. He told me he was on his way, and I wished I could called Tara and tell her the good news. She was coming on the weekends to spend time/have sex with Hamich, and I was basically boyfriendless. I relied on the first person I knew I could trust.

Ben buzzed the door and I let him in. He immediately went to kiss me, but I pushed him away.

"Everything alright?"

"I didn't call you over for sex."

"Shit. I'm all worked up and I brought condoms," he muttered.

"I'm sorry, I just got a call from my agent…"

"What did she say?" he asked, suddenly concerned.

"She sold my book for a three-book deal. For two hundred thousand dollars."

"That's fantastic news!" he cried, scooping me up in a hug.

"No, it's really not. How am I going to hide this from my father? Nobody, no debut author, gets a six-figure deal."

"Who says you have to tell him?" he responded.

"He's… my dad," I muttered dejectedly. "I tell him everything."

"Not everything," he said. "He doesn't know about Karé representing you. Or the book you wrote. He doesn't even know you write."

"I write erotica," I muttered. "Doesn't that make me two steps away from being a porn star?"

"You don't even have to put a picture of yourself up," he said. "Only Karé and I know your project."

"But Dad's going to start asking questions when the money comes in."

"Put it in savings," he replied. "And he'll be busy enough with the new baby, won't he?"

"True," I noted. "But what if I have to pay taxes?"

"Plan ahead. Be careful. And you'll be fine. Secrets taking planning. And nobody ever has to know you wrote erotica."


	8. Chapter 8

_Disclaimer- I still don't own Castle, Andrew Marlowe does, and I don't want him to sue me for playing in his sandbox. I'm just having fun, I make no moneys._

* * *

The money started coming in; Karé divided it into monthly paychecks, and I had enough to live on without Dad's help.

Hell, if I had wanted to support myself last winter when I broke up with Pi, I'd have started writing erotica a long time ago.

And then, I got my first editing letter.

I thought Ben's edit was tough, this was tougher. My world narrowed down to college and writing. I ended up quitting my work-study scholarship so I could have more time to work on my novel. I hardly had time to go out while editing, it was so tough. I wanted to beg my father for advice; he knew what to do. But I wasn't sure how he'd respond if he knew I was writing erotica and personally, I didn't want to find out.

It was when he called me about the annual Halloween Party that I panicked; I had been so consumed in my work, I hadn't even thought about a costume. I raked through my closet and then it struck me: I had money to buy a costume.

After my women's studies classes, I believed that it was a travesty when women showed up the store for a costume and there were nothing but sexy costumes. I was not showing up looking like a slut at my dad's Halloween party under any circumstances, or any racial stereotype, either.

I found a website for costumes and found a good Renaissance costume that didn't show a lot, except pushing my boobs up and giving me noticeable cleavage. I ordered it, barely noticing the $500 price tag. I had the money to pay for it, and the expedited shipping.

It came within five days, on the day of the party, and it was a gorgeous sage green with embroidery on it. I wriggled and twisted until I had it laced up for the most part, and caught the subway to Tribeca along with several other women in slutty costumes and vampires and werewolves and an oopma loompa.

Dad's apartment had the door open and the party was in full swing. I had arrived late on purpose, I didn't want to be the first one there. I found Kate sitting on the couch; she was wearing a pair of black yoga pants and a green top that had a single eyeball over her belly and a mouth with sharp teeth; she was Mike Wazowski from _Monsters Inc._

"Hi!" I cried. "You look great!"

"I'm exhausted," she complained. "I can't get up without help, otherwise, I'd stand up and hug you."

"That's alright," I said, sitting down next to her to give her a side-hug. The boning on the corset was a prison for my body. "Sorry, I can't move my torso very well in this costume."

"Your boobs look amazing," Kate noted sadly. "I can't keep mine in my bra anymore, they're getting so big." She groaned.

"And that's a problem?"

She finally chuckled. "Well, when you're a cop, it is. I'm surprised you're not wearing something sluttier."

"Are you calling me a slut?" I joked.

"No! Not at all! I'm just saying, those were all the costumes I saw at Party City when I went shopping, and… I couldn't fit into a single one of them! But you can, and I'm so jealous!" she cried. "This costume is beautiful, though, Alexis! Where did you get it?"

I hadn't anticipated being asked where I got my costume. "Um… online," I said. Well, that was the truth.

"Is this brocade?" she asked, pinching the material between her fingers from my long skirt.

"I… I don't know," I admitted. "I didn't check."

"Did you put it on your emergency credit card?"

"Oh, no, I didn't," I promised.

"Maybe I can borrow it next Halloween? You bought it, right?"

"Of course. Renting costumes just creeps me out. It'll be in my closet, and of course you can. I'll probably wear it to the Renaissance Festival, too, in the spring. The one in Central Park. And I'm sure I'll have an opportunity to wear it somewhere else."

"You will. I'm sure you will. But I'm wondering if I'll ever fit back into my pre-pregnancy clothes."

"How much have you gained?" I asked. I realized that this was an awkward question. "If you're comfortable telling me. You don't have to."

"I'm only seven months along and I've already gained twenty-eight pounds as of my last doctor's visit. I've never been this big in my entire life."

"It'll come off," I promised. "Once you get back into your training routine, I don't see how the weight can stick around."

"Hey-hey!" Dad came through the living room from his office, holding a bowl of Halloween candy. He was dressed as Count Dracula. "Alexis, you made it!"

"Hi, Dad!" I cried, struggling myself to stand up in my corset.

"You look…" his gaze landed on my breasts, and he winced. "Really good, except for…"

"Dad, don't," I said, holding up a hand.

"Why are you wearing that?'

"Would you have preferred me to wear a slutty nurse costume?" I suggested.

"Point taken. You look great."

"Thank you. This was the best I could find."

One of Dad's poker buddies' wife, who was dressed as a witch, leaned over. "I _love_ your costume, Alexis!"

"Thank you! I love yours!"

The door burst open and a witch in a green and purple crushed velvet dress with a giant red wig filled up the doorway. "I think I'll have a child… ON TOAST!" Grams bellowed, waving an old-fashioned besom broomstick.

"Grams!" I cried.

"I got the part!" Grams said through the buckteeth she was wearing and she grinned. "I'm going to be Winnifred Sanderson on Broadway!" I shrieked and ran up to hugged her and get a closer look at her costume.

"I'm so excited! We'll be there on opening night," I promised. "I'm so happy for you!"

"Oh kid, you think you've only gotten one once-in-a-lifetime change in this business, and then, it's over. And then, this happens! You don't understand how excited I am!"

"Congratulations, Mother," Dad said, coming over to give her a hug. Kate was on his arm, he had helped her up from the couch. "I am so proud of you! This is incredible news."

"It really is," Kate said. "We're family, we'll be there for you."

* * *

Around ten, I decided to go out to another Halloween party, giving myself permission to get drunk on a night out with some of my fellow students at my friend Allison's apartment. She was one of the few people in my accounting group I could actually stand.

She had a place in Harlem that was rent-controlled and mainly for Columbia students. I had to take the train up there really late, but I wasn't afraid of Harlem, necessarily. Harlem wasn't so bad for a native New Yorker. I'd stay at Nina's if I got too drunk, she had given me a key and let her doorman know who I was.

Most of the floor was one giant party. I got in for free (mostly because of my boobs being on display, all men were charged fifteen bucks each, mostly to look at the women) and navigated my way between girls dressed as slutty witches, slutty nurses, slutty police officers (I knew that would put Kate in a bad mood if she saw them), slutty Catholic school girls, slutty cheerleaders, and brave souls who just showed up in thongs and bras with animal ear headbands on. I looked very matronly compared to them.

I found Allison's tiny studio apartment (I figured that this apartment building was once a hotel that had little efficiency kitchens built in before it became Columbia student housing) and she was making margaritas. She was dressed as Barbie and was wearing a blonde wig and had already had enough to drink that she clumsily whirled around and slurred, "Alexis! You made it!"

"Hi!" I replied.

She hugged me. "You look so pretty! I love your costume."

"I love yours, too!" I replied. I was sick of saying that tonight, but it was only polite.

"Where'd you get it?"

"Online."

"Me too! Can I make you a Margarita?"

"Yes, please."

I got my margarita and a started drinking while a guy dressed as Jack Sparrow named Matt, who was a poli-sci major, started talking to me. We were just chatting outside Allison's apartment when I saw Sept Lindo coming through the hallway with a slutty Snow White on his arm, he was dressed like Prince Charming. I felt vomit rising in my throat. He was no Prince Charming, and he had put a lot of money into this costume because he could.

"Everything alright?" Matt asked me. I was a little drunk by now, Allison had put a lot of tequila into my margarita. I suddenly felt like bugs were crawling all over my skin.

"Hey, Alexis," Sept sneered at me. I could see in his eyes he was a little drunk already. "Watch out for this one, she'll give a half-ass blow job and quit halfway through to fuck your best friend five minutes later."

"Hey, fuck you!" I snapped, feeling like I had been slapped in the face.

He laughed. "Cocktease," he replied. I felt Matt backing off from me.

I wasn't a cocktease, I was just a woman who didn't want to fuck a guy an hour after I met him. He didn't respect me when I told him no. I went to Allison's apartment and found her sitting on the futon that doubled as her bed talking to someone dressed as a werewolf.

"Allison!" I called. "Hey, Allison!"

"Alexis, what's going on?" she asked, turning around.

"I'm heading out."

"It's only eleven-thirty!" she cried, surprised. "Stay!"

"I can't, I'm sorry. Good night! I'll see you tomorrow in Accounting!"

"Bye!" she called after me.

I rushed out to the street. There was I was, scared to go back into a party, because the man who almost sexually assaulted me was there. I could have hooked up with Matt had Sept not come through. I could hardly trust men anymore. It was pathetic.


	9. Chapter 9

_Disclaimer- I still don't own Castle, Andrew Marlowe does, and I don't want him to sue me for playing in his sandbox. _

* * *

I woke up to the smell of coffee in my apartment on a November Saturday morning. Ben had spent the night, and I guess he started the coffee. I got out of bed and slipped into some pajamas and a hoodies on, due to the chill of winter creeping into the apartment. It was supposed to snow a bit today, which I didn't like; this meant longer lines in Dean & Deluca and Starbucks, and fewer cabs out to catch. Luckily, it was a Saturday, I didn't have classes, but a baby shower for Kate. I brushed my teeth and face, and went out to the kitchen.

"Good morning," I said.

"Hi," Ben said, making something on the stove. He didn't kiss me, not that I minded. The deal we had come to was: we were friends until we went towards the bed. There was no kissing, no hand-holding, no affectionate touching of any kind, and no making out until we were alone until then. Once in the bed, we were lovers. When we got out of the bed in the morning, we went back to being no-PDA friends. "I'm making you a good Southern fry-up for breakfast."

"What are you making?"

"Bacon, sausage links, cheese grits, hashbrowns, and fried eggs."

"What's that sound? My arteries hardening?"

"Quit being a baby and just eat," he said, as the toast popped up in the toaster. "It's delicious."

"I really hope that's turkey bacon."

"Don't insult me."

He set a plate out with a cup of coffee at the tiny breakfast nook table for me, and I sat down and took a bite of the cheese grits. "Mmm," I muttered, my eyes rolling up into the back of my head.

"See? You should listen to me when it comes to food," he replied, sitting down with his plate across from me.

"Alright, I trust you. But if I ate a breakfast like this every morning, I'd turn into one of those fat-ass romance authors with no life asides from her cat and a vibrator."

"Like E.K. Taylor?"

I groaned. "Ugh! Don't mention her! Let's talk about our plans for today."

"Mine are to grade the little shit's papers from my freshman comp class and go see the lights at Rockefeller Plaza."

"Old news for me. Once you've seen it ten times, you're not really as impressed."

"Well… Alexis…" he sighed. His tone had changed, it became hesitant. "I hate to break it to you, but... I'm going with somebody else."

"Oh…" I said, trying to mask my surprise. "Who?"

"She's an NYU student," he said, shrugging. "Her name's Ashlyn. She in graduate Women's Studies."

What was that feeling in the pit of my stomach? Jealousy? Anger? Shame? What the hell was I thinking? We were friends. Yeah, we had sex, but afterwards, we didn't cuddle and we had never agreed to exclusivity. "We're friends, we can talk about the people we're dating," I offered. "Have you slept with her, yet?"

"No!" he snorted. "Is that any of your business?"

"If you get the herp from her and give them to me, I will murder you," I warned. "And I know how to get away with it, too."

"I'm sure you do," he noted.

"I do, thanks."

"We've never really never talked about that. We've just assumed the other one of us is clean, too."

"What? Sexual health?"

"Well, yeah. I never asked your number."

"My number?"

"The number of people you've had sex with."

"I wouldn't tell you that!"

"I wouldn't tell you that, either, but you can get something your first time if you choose poorly."

"Do I look like the kind of person who has an STD?" I asked, offended.

"Anybody can have an STD, you're not protected from all of them by condoms," he replied.

I felt a rumbling feeling in my stomach. "We're getting tested," I told him. "It's free at the student health center and I'm not having sex with you again unless you can show me a clean bill of health."

"You better not have anything," he said.

I groaned and face-palmed. "What kind of irresponsible, cavalier people are we to have been sleeping together and not know if we're both STD free, first?

"You're right," he admitted. I got out my phone and searched the Columbia Student Health website to find the link to have a test. "Now you're making me all paranoid."

I found the number to call for a test, got mine scheduled as we finished breakfast. "So, I'm going in on Monday, and I'll have my results by Tuesday. You make yours."

"What's the number?" he asked, refilling his coffee cup. I texted it to him.

I started on scrubbing the pans out while he was on the phone.

"I can break the date with Ashlyn," he offered, hanging up his phone. I didn't want him feeling like he had to not date, but I already hated Ashlyn and I didn't even know her. I couldn't appear jealous or controlling; I wasn't his girlfriend. He didn't owe me sex, just like I didn't owe him sex, either.

"Ben, we're friends. With benefits, just like my book. Consider this helping me with my research. And I'm not your girlfriend, so I'm not going to control your love life; that's different."

"If you're sure."

"I'm sure." I called his bluff. "We can end this, no strings attached if you get serious with her and want to be exclusive."

He sighed, sitting back down. "Alright. So what are you up to today?"

"My stepmother's baby shower."

"Oh, that's right. When is she due?"

"Christmas Day, actually. I'm looking forward to them being busy with a baby and not me."

"Well, have fun," he said, slipping his coat on. "I'll call when I get my results."

I had wrapped the government-mandated carseat, the little outfit, and baby blanket perfectly the day before, but I never considered how difficult it would be to transport it to Dad's loft apartment. I ended up having to hail a taxi.

When I arrived, Laney was just setting up the party, and Kate was sitting on the couch, dressed all pretty in a maternity sweater dress with her feet up. I hadn't imagined Kate's belly getting any bigger, but it was. Laney and I were the first ones there, and she hugged me immediately. "Aren't you loving have your own place?" she asked.

"I am," I admitted. "How can I help?"

"Alexis, is that you?" Dad asked from the office. "Hi, honey!"

"Hi, Dad," I said. I hugged and kissed him. "Are you staying?"

"Those are a lot of boxes, what did you get the baby?" he asked.

"You'll see," I said.

"You look really good," Kate said as I came over to her to greet her. "Is this a new dress?"

"Actually, is it," I said, realizing this grey wool A-line dress and tights that kept me so warm hadn't been cheap. Neither had the four-inch patent black platform heels I had worn with it, or the other four dresses I had bought that day between Loft, White House Black Market, and Bebe on a shopping spree with my new monthly paycheck.

"I saw that dress at Anne Taylor Loft," Laney noted. "I love it! I want to get it."

"It was selling out fast," I admitted.

"Honey, are you abusing your emergency credit card?" Dad noted. "Am I going to get a bill on your AmEx this month?"

Damnit. How had I been so careless? A new dress and multiple presents? Could I have been more obvious that I had more money than Dad gave me as an allowance? I needed to protect my new source of income and how I got it. I'd have to be super-careful not to overspend, at least where they could see it.

"I saved up for the dress," I admitted. That was a truth. "And used coupons. Same thing for the present. Don't worry, I know how to cut corners after that time in an apartment alone." That was the truth, too. Well, if I could get away with partial truths, I'd do it as long as I could. I never lied to Dad if I could help it, and I was going to try my damnest to avoid him ever finding out I had a secret career.

I helped out at the baby shower making sure Kate had all her presents written down with all her friends. She mostly got baby clothes and a diaper cake as presents. It was fun to share this moment with Kate, and to be there with her, especially as the baby's big sister. Tara and her mother showed up, and my presents were a huge hit. I think my favorite baby outfit was a onesie that said My daddy's a geek, but I'm proof he scored once!

"Twice," I corrected. "There's me."

I helped Laney with the clean-up and Dad arrived home after Kate went to take a nap. He told me that he and Kate had already bought all the needed stuff, like a high chair, the crib, the pump, the strollers, all those things, that's why so many things weren't on the baby registry.

"I don't mind baby-sitting," I admitted. "I've not been around a lot of babies, but this one's special. He's going to be different. I know I'll love him."

"You will," Dad said. "We want you to be there when we have him."

"You do?"

"Kate and I have talked about it, and we don't mind if you're in the delivery room when the baby's born," he said. "We want you to feel like you're still part of this family, even if you're not living with us."

"Ew, Dad, I don't want to watch that!"

"You don't have to," Dad said. "You can stay around her head. You don't have to watch the baby crown or anything."

"Oh. Okay. Well, that sounds good," I admitted. I didn't have any desire to see another woman's cooch. Ever. No matter who she was.

"Alright. You'll be on-call during that time, right?"

"Of course, that's fine with me. I'm going to get going to see Tara and Nina tonight."

"Love you."

"Love you too."

I went to meet Nina and Tara, who had come up for the weekend. They were waiting for me at the Dean and Deluca in Midtown and we had lattes and biscotti.

"Whenever I go to baby showers, I think about having a baby," Nina sighed. "And then I start naming them, but I'm between boyfriends right now."

"I like the idea of kids, but I'm a ways off from that," I said.

Tara's lower lip trembled in silence.

"Tara!" I cried.

"I… I'm sorry! I have to tell someone!" she sobbed.

"You're pregnant?" I asked, shocked.

She burst into tears. "We were so careful!"

"How's Hamich taking it?" I asked.

"He's excited. I'm not. I've to go through getting fat and going through labor. This sucks!"

"It won't," I promised. "We'll be here for you. We'll throw the baby shower."

"Thank God he's already a junior analyst at Brewster-Keegan," she muttered. "I'm not even done with school!"

"You'll be fine," I said.

"I'm still sort of shocked," Nina said.

"Oh please, you use birth control and you're Catholic!" I snorted. "It can happen to you, just remember!"

"How far along are you?"

"I don't know," she admitted. "I'm terrified to go to the doctor!"

My jaw dropped. "What, are you kidding me? You need to go to the doctor! Have you even taken a pregnancy test?"

"Well… no. I'm just late."

"Come on," I said, getting my coat and purse. "We're going to the drug store."

Tara and Nina trekked behind me as I lead the way to the closest Duane Ready and dragged them inside to the family planning aisle. I grabbed two different pregnancy tests and got out my debit card. I lead them to my apartment and took out the tests. "Now go to the bathroom and pee," I said.

She locked herself in the bathroom, and Nina and I sat down.

"This place is starting to look more like you," Nina noted. "And less like your stepmother."

"Well, I'm clearing out several of her things I didn't like," I admitted. "She took the stuff she liked, you know?"

The bathroom door opened, and Tara came out with a towel folded over her tests.

"Sit," I commanded, setting my phone for two minutes. "We'll find out in just a second."

"Until then, we can just…" Nina blanked. "Read something!"

"Yeah!" I cried, getting out my copy of Game of Thrones: Fire and Ice. I began reading to her, and before I knew it, my phone's alarm went off. "Alright, let's do this," I told Tara.

She reached forward and unfolded the hand towel, nervously. She gasp in relief and clapped a hand to her heart. "Not pregnant!" She picked up the other one and squealed. "Yes!" she cried, waving it in the air.

"Tara!" Nina cried. "I'm so happy!"

"Oh, me too! I'm so relieved!" she cried, standing up. I stood up and hugged her.

Of course, I was going through an STD test tomorrow morning. I was fairly certain I didn't have anything, but of my friends, Tara dodged a pregnancy, what if, statistically, I had something? Ben didn't know I was on the pill, obviously, and we had been using condoms ever since. Grams had accidentally gotten pregnant despite being on the pill and I had been an accidental pregnancy for my parents. I wasn't taking any chances. I had Plan B waiting in my medicine cabinet, just in case. But still…

I got my STD test back from campus services. My blood test came back thirty minutes later negative for all the major diseases. I was relieved, and mad at myself for getting worked up over it. I sent Ben a text that I had my results and I was willing to show him the print out if he wanted to see it.

I was drinking coffee in the Student Union when there was a tap on the window to the booth I was sitting in. I looked up and saw Ben standing outside the window. I waved, and he got something out and pressed it to the glass. It was a STD test from Columbia Student Health Services; all of them were negative. I grinned and beckoned for him to come sit with me.

"So how did your date go with Ashlyn?" I asked him when he sat down.

He shrugged. "She's nice. We didn't sleep together, if that's what you want to know so badly."

"Are you going to sleep with her?"

"If she asks me back to her place and asks me to, yes."

"Well, aren't you a gentleman."

"I am, thank you very much."

"Well, if you want to see my results, here they are," I said, digging through my purse. I got out the STD test result and handed it to him, even though it was crumpled and dog-earred a bit.

He nodded, reading it. "I'm glad to see it. So, we'll just continue with condoms?"

"Shh!" I hissed. I lowered my voice to a whisper. "I'm fine with that."

"How was the baby shower?"

"We did baby shower things. And I almost gave it away that I'm earning extra money because I brought too many presents and wore too nice of a dress. I plan on wearing that dress again at Thanksgiving. And Christmas. And New Year's to avoid suspicion."

"I've never been so interested in women's dresses in my whole life," he said in monotone. "Please, continue."

I rolled my eyes at his sarcasm. "I think they'll stop asking questions once the baby's born. They'll be too busy to notice."

"Good."

"Do you want go back to my place?"

"Right now?"

"Yes."

"Can't. I've got an English comp class to teach about in thirty minutes."

"Oh, fun," I said. "Well, what are you doing for Thanksgiving?"

He shrugged. "Gettin' drunk."

"Why don't you come to my parent's place?"

"No. That'd be weird."

"I'll just tell the truth; we're friends."

"You think we can pull that off?"

"Well… Dad has no idea I'm making money writing erotica. So, I think so."

* * *

On Thanksgiving Eve, I went to my father's loft to do the prep work for the dinner tomorrow night. We had breakfast planned, but everything else just needed it's turn in the oven. Kate, as usual, was stuck on the couch, bemoaning her fate, trying to be useful with folding things. She did my laundry to be kind. Dad and Kate had agreed to have an extra place setting for a friend of mine from college. I thought it would be doing Ben a favor to be introduced to my Dad. I was certain they'd have a ton of things to talk about.

Grams had tonight off, and was coming over after a long, private massage at her apartment. She was enjoying her new paychecks as they were developing_ Hocus Pocus_. She had growing fanbase of broadway-obsessed women, girls, and gay men watching her through the paparazzi. She arrived in a flurry, with Jell-O mold and a bottle of wine. The whole house seemed to light up when she walked in. Jim arrived with a box of crackers and a cheese ball, his great "contribution," he joked. He and Grams made an effort to get along, which they didn't normally.

By the time the doorbell rang, almost everything was in the oven. Dad told me it wasn't a big deal, and he'd take care of the last-minute stuff and I could just relax with the guests. After smoothing the lines of my grey A-line dress that I forced myself to wear again for the holiday, I answered the door, and Ben was there.

"Hi!" I cried. "I'm so glad you made it! Come in! Let me get your coat!"

"I brought some marinated asparagus," he offered, holding up a dish with the vegetables in it and saran wrap. "I followed it from my mother's recipe box."

"Oh, that's great!" I cried. "This is perfect, we only had the green bean casserole made for the vegetables. Dad!" I shouted. "My friend Ben is here."

"Hey there," Dad said, coming out of the kitchen. "Hi, Richard Castle, welcome to my home."

He shook Ben's hand. "It's really nice to meet you, sir," he said.

"Knock it off with the 'sir' stuff. Just call me Rick. I'd make a drink for you, but my hands are full right now. Alexis, can you do it?"

"Sure," I said, taking Ben's arm and pulling him over to the bar. "What can I make you?"

"A beer'll be fine," he admitted.

"Okay, we've got Dos Equis and St. Pauli Girl," I said, peering into the mini-fridge. "I can make you a cocktail."

"No, the St. Pauli Girl sounds good," he said. I got the beer and a glass for him and took him into the living room.

"Everyone, this is Ben," I said, introducing him to Kate, Jim, and Grams. "This is my stepmother, Kate-"

"Forgive me, I can't get up very easily," Kate said, indicating her swollen stomach.

"That's alright, it's nice to meet you," he shook her hand.

"And this is Jim Beckett, Kate's dad, and my grandmother, Martha Rogers."

"Nice to meetcha, nice to meetcha," Ben said, making the rounds to shake their hands. We sat down and watched the last of the Macy's Parade while Grams grilled him. We had a few more drinks and Jim and Ben got into a discussion about the Marines as we started dinner.

"You know what they say about the marines, right?" Ben said. "There's only two branches of the military, the army and the navy. The air force is a corporation and the marines are cult."

Jim laughed. "Did I ever tell you I was in the Air Force before I met Kate's mother?"

"And now I fell sufficiently awkward," Ben chuckled.

Kate put a headband with a feather in the back on her head as a joke and how ready she was for dinner. "I didn't think pregnancy was going to be this much of a pain," she muttered.

"One more month," Grams sang out. "And you'll have your bouncing bundle of joy for the rest of your life!"

"Not a moment too soon," Kate grumbled. "He kicks. A lot. He broke one of my ribs."

"When?" I cried.

"About a week ago. I was trying to climb the stairs to the nursery and he just jammed his little foot into my ribcage, really sharp, and it felt like a knife in my torso."

"I'm fascinated," Ben admitted. "Can you actually see the foot through your skin?"

"No, not quite," Kate admitted. "But you can feel it when he does."

"Have you got a name for him?"

"We've settled on something, yes," Dad said.

"Noel Lovecraft Castle," Kate admitted, rubbing her stomach some more, as if it hurt. "Because he's going to be born near Christmas. We're kind of afraid the baby's breeched, though. He hasn't moved in a few weeks. We might have to get a C-section, which I don't want."

"Why not?" Ben asked, surprised.

"It takes longer to heal," Grams answered. "Katherine probably wants to go back to work as a soon as possible."

"And you're a detective?" Ben asked.

"With homicide," Dad said. "I've assisted her the last five and half years, as her partner."

"And that's where you've gotten your ideas for Nikki Heat?" Ben asked.

"Yep," I answered for them.

"Maybe I should follow a senator around," Ben said, digging into his candied yams.

"Is that what you want to write?" Dad asked. "Government suspense?"

"Historical fiction. I'm working on a biography of President Taft right now. It'll probably be my MFA project."

"You study with a lot of my former professors, then," Dad said. "I wanted to get an MFA after getting my journalism and education undergraduate, but then Alexis came along, and I got a book deal-"

"I'd love to know more about getting an agent."

I stayed stonily silent.

"Well, a lot's changed," Dad admitted. "I started querying in the early nineties, when most literary agency were snail-mail only. The internet's really changed the way the querying process goes. Self-publishing has changed a lot of things, too, it's gotten cheaper and more lucrative when done correctly, although there's still a lot of self-published garbage out there. Do you read _Publisher's Weekly_?"

"I read it on my iPad," Ben admitted. "From the library. It's expensive to have a subscription."

"Ah, yes, it was an expense I shouldered for a while. I'd encourage you to read that as much as you can, because it gives you ideas about how the publishing industry works and what they're looking for. It takes an act of God to get published these days. Just promise me if James Frey ever shows up to your MFA program, you won't sign a contract to write for him and his ghost-writing company."

"The guy that wrote _a Million Little Pieces_?"

"Yeah, he preys on Ivy-League MFA students, because hell, you guys have thousands in students loans to pay off and there's not a lot you can do with an MFA in the real world right out of college anymore. There's reasons why there's agents out there; to protect you and your interests. They basically get you more than ten per cent, their fee, so they pay for themselves. Have you met any, yet?"

"No, sir, I have not."

"Go to the next Mystery Writers of America New York Convention with a writing sample and make it a point to talk to a few agents. Get your pitch ready, too. They'll ask for that kind of stuff."

"Or, you could just craft a query letter and send them out," I suggested.

"And land in the slush pile?" Dad snorted.

"It happens," I said, trying to disguise my nerves. Dad obviously thought he knew the most about the industry of everyone in the room. He'd be surprised by my amount of knowledge, now. "But wasn't Stephenie Meyer picked out of a slush pile?"

Dad shrugged. "I think so. You don't have to have an 'in' to get published traditionally. Lots of people send query letters and land agents every day. But traditional publishing isn't a perfect industry. Talented writers fall through the cracks all the time."

I wanted to say that any given agent could be getting ten thousand queries a year, but only take on two new clients on their roster from those queries, but I kept my mouth shut. It was not easy to keep my mouth shut when my whole childhood, Dad would welcome me into the conversation like an adult and expect me to speak my mind, but have evidence behind it.

After dinner, we quickly rinsed the plates off and left them for the dishwashers that were making the rounds, and I offered to show Ben the baby's nursery. I had helped Dad and Kate paint Grams's old room a light blue and we had been organizing the baby furniture and toys and books the last few weeks. We stopped by my room, and I told him to ignore the unmade bed and dufflebag, but he smirked at it. "That's not military-regulation," he joked.

"Good thing I'm not a military girl," I replied, shutting the door. I opened the door to the nursery. "This is the baby's room. I've helped a lot with setting it up and organizing things," I said, indicating the cloth diaper drawer.

"Your dad's gonna stay home and raise the baby while Kate works?"

"I don't know," I admitted. "He did for me that way. It was a nice way to grow up."

"What happened to your mother?"

"Oh, she lives in Malibu with her current husband. She's had a few walk-on roles on sitcoms, a few bit parts in indie movies, but that's about it. She claims her whole life is about acting, only occasionally about me. She used to be one of my Grams's students, she introduced her to my father, that's how they met and got pregnant with me."

"Did you see her a lot?"

"No."

"It was just you and your dad?"

"Pretty much. He's a great father, though. He was really involved in my life, my education, my boyfriends and friends. He still is. I have to force him to back away sometimes. Like when I talked him into letting me live in an apartment of my own. I can talk him into anything if I try hard enough, though."

"Like what?"

"Like my boyfriend last year. We wanted to get an apartment together, and we did. Completely off his dime, so he didn't have say in it. And he was stumped when I moved out because I pointed out he lived with his girlfriends all through college. I realized how much I liked my privacy when the novelty of living with my boyfriend and access to any-time sex wore off and regretted it."

"So you don't want to try it again?"

"No. I like living alone. I grew up here, Dad always had people over, and I'd hide in my room instead when it got to be too much for me. I realized I'm an introvert, too. I never thought I was until last year living with Pi."

"Pie?" Ben blurted out. He burst out laughing. "Your ex-boyfriend's name was a baked good?"

"No, 'Pi' like the mathematical term. He was a douche, though. He did speak down to me a bit and was very controlling in a way I didn't like during sex."

Ben threw his hands in the air. "No judgment here."

"Well… I admit, it's nice to have a warm body to come home to in your bed sometimes. But he was always all over me when I got home, always having to touch my hand or my back or my shoulders or something, and I just wanted some space when I got home, y'know? I started dreading when he'd get home from work. I'd wait until he left so I could take a shower without him intruding and driving me insane. The bathroom wasn't a private area of our apartment, according to him. I'd be peeing, and he'd walk in like, 'no big deal.'"

"He had no concept of privacy? Was he ever in the military?"

"Nope, he just didn't care. I need some help maintaining some illusions, like shaving my legs."

"Do you not like it when I join you in the shower?"

"No!" I cried. "You always ask before tearing back the curtain and you respect me when I say no. I want to shave my legs in peace, you know? I may be female, but I'm not naturally hairless from the neck down!"

"Are you fucking kidding me? You have hair?" he asked in a mock surprise.

"Fuck off."

He burst out laughing. "Hey, wanna get high?"

"What?!" I cried. "Ben, no! My stepmother's a cop and this is my baby brother's nursery!"

"I was only kidding, I don't have any weed on me."

"You son of a bitch!" I cried, laughing as he picked me up to take me downstairs. I squealed, attempting to keep my skirt over my underwear, but it was funny, even if we weren't stoned.


	10. Chapter 10

_Disclaimer- I still don't own Castle, Andrew Marlowe does, and I don't want him to sue me for playing in his sandbox. I'm just having fun, I make no moneys._

* * *

As the holidays and finals season progressed, I finally gave in and bought all my Christmas presents online this year. Finals were kicking my ass, paired with the copy edits I got in the mail for _Benefits_. Ben and I hardly saw each other during finals week, and by the time it was over, I took a day just to sleep, but was woken up at about 3:30 by a call from Kate.

"Hey," I said. "I was just napping."

"Sorry to wake you up. How did your tests go?" she asked.

"Just fine. I think I made all A's this semester," I admitted.

"Well, I'd like to ask you over for dinner. Your dad is making herb-encrusted tilapia tonight."

"That sounds heavenly. I think all I've eaten in the last week is Goldfish crackers and coffee."

"Yeah, I remember surviving on coffee during finals weeks on college. You can tell us all about it over dinner. Oh, and you got a few packages delivered here."

"I… what?"

"I had to sign for them," she said. "You know that your father has our address as your forwarding address."

I remembered vaguely that I had put an extra shipping fee that the packages that meant the came early and with extra care. I had had no idea they'd want me to sign for them, too, or that Dad had his address as the forwarding one. I had been so busy with finals, I had forgotten. "I'll pick them up tonight. Don't open them, they're Christmas presents!"

"Okay… If you say so," Kate replied.

"Alright, I'll see you tonight!"

I got out of bed and took a long, hot bath with iPad playing music on the bathroom counter. I stayed in there and relaxed until the water turned tepid and got dressed to go over to the loft.

I rang the doorbell and walked in. "Hi Dad, hi Kate!" I called into the apartment.

"Finals are over?" Dad asked as I walked into the kitchen.

"Yes! I'm already getting some of my grades," I said. "So far, nothing but A's."

"I'm proud of you!" Dad said, stirring the vegetables in the wok.

"Can I help by setting the table?" I asked, opening the cabinets.

"It would be appreciated." I put my purse down on the counter and started.

* * *

As we were cleaning up dinner, Dad told me to go relax by the fireplace and have another glass of wine and keep Kate company. She was as big as a house at this point, and really not enjoying this part of her pregnancy.

"Is there anything I can get you?" I asked her, setting down my wine glass.

"No, but I wanted to ask you about something," Kate said, sounding uneasy. "Your father and I have noticed you've got a lot of new things, and he reviewed your allowance and… we're just wondering where this extra money is coming from."

"As long as I'm not up to my ears in credit card debt and I'm paying my bills, why does it matter?" I asked.

"Because, Alexis, you're my daughter…" she stopped, then corrected herself, "my stepdaughter. And if you're involved in something scandalous or illegal, it's going to come back to me. Really hard."

"What do you think I'm doing?" I asked, surprised.

"Well…" she began, put on the spot. "I'm not trying to insult you, but we know you quit the work-study program. Yet, you're spending like crazy."

"I'm not, I swear," I said. I hadn't been able to wear any new clothes or shoes around her and Dad in forever. I was planning on wearing that A-line dress for a while this holiday season, which would kind of suck. "I happen to be very thrifty."

"Well, we've got seven boxes in the study with your name on it," she said, shrugging. "Your father thinks you're dealing or something."

"Dealing?" I spluttered out. "What?"

"I know you're a kind, good girl, but Castle always comes up with the wildest theories," she said, shaking her head. "I keep telling him you've got a good head on your shoulders, but he's worried someone is taking advantage of you, somehow. You're not doing anything… with sex, are you?" she asked awkwardly.

"No!" I cried out. "No way! What makes you think that?"

"I don't know… just, you're a pretty girl, and girls your age can get a lot of attention…"

I almost choked. "I have a lot more self-respect than that!"

She blushed- something I didn't see her do often. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have brought that up."

"Kate, how could you think such a thing?"

"Your Dad and I see the worst of the worst things that can happen to young women when they get out of their own… Everyday, it's terrible, terrible stuff. It's a trap and so easy to fall into... We make up things in our heads as parents, the worst possible scenario- just tell me where you're getting this extra income and tell me it's not from the sex industry."

Well… technically, it kind of was. "I'm not doing anything of the sort, okay?" I replied. "Will you two calm down and stop digging in my finances?"

"Well, this has been sufficiently awkward…" Kate said. "You're never going to tell us where you're getting this money, are you?"

I felt like my boundaries had been "I'm being an adult," I said. "An adult doesn't have to let her parents review her money."

"Fine," Kate said.

"I'm going home," I stated. "I'll see you this weekend. Good night."

On the way out the door with the packages from the study, I hailed a taxi, who helped me load everything. In the taxi, I called Ben, but he didn't answer. I sent him a text message only to get something halfway home.

_Hey this is his girlfriend. We're kind of busy right now, can it wait?_

My stomach dropped. Ben was with Ashlyn. I should have known.

I did not text back.

* * *

After having Kate drill me concerning my finances and coming up with worst-case scenarios, I decided what the hell and wore my new dresses to all the Christmas parties being thrown around town that we were invited to. Dad and Kate stopped asking questions, and usually, it was just me and Dad at the party. Kate was sleepy and her feet swollen, she didn't want to go out.

"You'll never tell me where that money's coming from, will you?" Dad asked in the cab on the way to the Windmere's party in the Upper East side.

"I'm just good at budgeting," I replied.

We had a lot of parties to attend; more than I wanted to go to. I thought about asking Dad to say was sick to a few of them; it was kind of true with anxiety. Being around people constantly was not my idea of fun. Worst of all was when I had to hide from Sept Lindo when he'd arrive. I'd be standing there, talking to someone when I felt a hand ghost across the back of my waist. I turn around, and there was Sept Lindo, in all his handsome, but creepy glory, and I felt my skin crawl. I had once found him cute enough to make out with at a party. Now, felt sick at the thought.

I ignored all of Ben's text messages, too. I didn't want to intrude on whatever was making him busy with Ashlyn. I missed being around him and just talking to him.

On December 23rd, Dad took me home from a Christmas party, and dropped me off at my apartment. I just wanted to clean and finish that bottle of wine I had opened last night, but I got a text from Ben. I clicked ignore as I was climbing the stairs to the front door.

"I know you're ignoring me," Ben's voice rang out. He was standing beside his restored motorcycle in an old, cracked and faded leather jacket, watching me. "Was it what Ashlyn texted you over my phone?"

I nodded. "Yeah, I'm sorry, but Ben, I'm not going to be the other woman."

"Who says there's somebody else I'm committed to?"

I sighed. "Ben, don't make this harder than it has to be. I'm going through the social season here in New York, and it's not easy. I'm around all these people I don't like and that slimy asshole that got you fired last summer-"

"You have to be around him?" Ben asked, cupping my cheek with one of his gloved hands.

"I know. It sucks," I admitted. "But what can I do? He's everywhere. Him and his money."

"I hate that you have go through this," he muttered.

"But Ben… I can't be with you like this," I said softly.

"Ashlyn's dating other people," he said, shrugging. "I think she saw your name on my phone and got nervous… Can I come in? I'm freezing out here."

"Fine, okay," I said, opening the front door. We up to my apartment and I made sure the heater was on and he sat down on the couch while I made him a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a cup of coffee on my Keurig. "Here, I'm being a stereotypical woman and making you a sandwich."

"No, you're being a good hostess," Ben said. "I swear, everything that's happening with you these days… I feel like I've been a bad influence in you."

"Yeah, you kind of have," I joked, sitting down as he started eating the sandwich. "But seriously, Ben. Tell me what's happening with you and Ashlyn. I know everybody tells me that I don't know her, she's not my problem, but she kind of is. I don't want to cause her pain. The only person I want to cause pain is Sept Lindo."

"For obvious reasons," Ben noted. "Alexis, what do you want? With me?"

"I don't know," I admitted.

* * *

That night, we ended up having sex out of necessity of lacking for the last few weeks, and talked ourselves in circles about the subject until I fell asleep out of exhaustion. I woke up the next morning to my phone ringing:

"Hi, Dad," I said, answering the phone.

"Honey, it's happening. How soon can you get here?"

"What?"

"Kate broke her water about an hour ago while we were making coffee, and we're heading to the hospital."

I sat up in bed, surprised. "She's in labor?" I repeated, surprised.

"Yeah. Meet us at the hospital?"

"Okay, I'll be there in a little bit!"

I hung up with Dad and ran to the bathroom to take a shower. Ben knocked on the door.

"Hey, Alexis?"

"What?" I called back.

"Is Kate going into labor?"

"Yes! I've got to get ready! I'll probably be there all day!" I called while rinsing shampoo out of my hair.

When I got out and was dressed, Ben had put some coffee on and was making eggs for me. "Thanks," I said, sitting down to take a bite, my hair still wet.

"Anytime."

"Where is Ashlyn right now?" I asked.

"She went back home to Chicago for Christmas."

"Well, I'll probably spending Christmas at the hospital this year." I wolfed down my eggs and toast. "I'm going to go dry my hair and get going. Let yourself out, okay?"

"Alright. Bye, Alexis."

* * *

I arrived in the Maternity Ward of St. Vincent's to see that Kate was just hooked up to the TENS machine and Dad was playing Candy Crush.

"Hi, I'm here!" I cried. My outfit was mostly from White House Black Market, save for my top from Henley top from Anne Taylor Loft.

"I love your top," Kate noted as a I walked in.

"Kate, how are you doing?"

"i've had my epidural," she said. "I'm hungry, but can't feel anything from the waist down."

"I'm so glad!" I cried, relieved that I wasn't going to have to watch her go through incredible pain."

"Yeah, she broke her water, and I rushed her here," Dad admitted, putting down his phone.

"So what happens next?" I asked.

"We wait for me to dilate. Oh look, I'm having a contraction!" she cried, took at the TENS machine read out.

"You are?" Dad asked.

"Yeah!" Kate said. "It really hurt when I first got in, and they immediately told me I was three centimeters, so they could put in the epidural. So far, this labor thing is a breeze!"

This was disappointing. On TV they always made birth look like an intense and hilarious event. Kate was sitting in the bed, happily eating ice chips and Dad was screwing around on his phone, waiting.

"I was hoping I'd be more instrumental in your labor," I muttered.

"Oh, this is fine," she said, writing it off. "Don't stress. I hope this is going to be a big deal for you."

"Well…"

"I know it's not very intense right now," Kate apologized. "But I'm sure it's going to get worse soon. You look great."

"Thanks," I said, sitting down. "And you do, too. I thought giving birth was a messy event."

"It is," Dad spoke up.

"I had time to put my make-up on," Kate admitted. "So now, we just wait."

I wanted to work on my edits, but I was too afraid of Dad getting curious and looking over my shoulder.

It ended up being so boring the first few hours. I modestly looked away when the nurses came in to check Kate's dilation and told us the status. Five centimeters, six centimeters, seven centimeters...

By the time the sun set, she finally hit nine centimeters and her OB GYN came in and had the delivery team assembled.

"How are you feeling, Kate?" he asked.

"There's a lot of pressure on my pelvis," she admitted.

"That's pretty normal. The epidural doesn't work the same way on every woman."

"Good to know," Kate muttered.

"I'm going to call for the delivery team to be assembled, now," he said. "We're going to have a baby in the next hour, alright?"

"Oh my God!" I cried. It suddenly became real; I was going to be a big sister, my only child status was expiring. There would be another child, a little boy, who would hold my father's attention. It was sudden realization for me; a part of me was not going to be Dad's number one concern. It all became real to me.

"Alexis?" Dad asked.

"I'm fine!" I lied.

"Alright. This is the big moment," he said.

"When the delivery team gets in here, I want you to take my hand," Kate said. "Your dad will have the other. And I'm going to start pushing and we'll have a baby."

"Oh God," I muttered.

"It's going to be okay," Kate promised me. "We've been planning on this."

I took a deep breath and wished I had some hard liquor. When the nursing team came in and set up the birthing kit, I ran up to Kate's side and took her hand.

"Dad," I said, "I'm not going to be your baby any more."

"Yes, you will," Dad said. "You'll always be my baby."

"Don't worry," Kate said. "I'll love you just as much as I love this baby."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes," she said as the nursing tied her legs into the stirrups. "I promised myself, and I'm promising you right now."

"She's right at ten centimeters," the nurse said to the doctor.

"Alright, Kate," her OB GYN said. "We're doing to start pushing now. Take a deep breathe, hold it for a count, and then release, and take another deep breath and push all the way through your pelvis. We'll have a baby here before you know it."

"Alright," Kate agreed. She looked terrified as they took the sheet off her stomach, and I could see nothing but bare skin. At least her enormous, stretch-mark covered belly kept me from seeing her vag.

"Okay, Kate," the doctor said. "Let's do this. One, two, three."

Kate took in a deep breathe and held it, then exhaled. She took another one, and then her face turned red, starting to push.

"Good job!" he coached. "Good job!"

"You can do this, honey," Dad told her. She squeezed my hand so hard and tried again. I lost count of the number of times she pushed, but sweat soaked the roots of her hair and she looked the opposite of the glamourous doppledanger of a Victoria's Secret model for once.

After several minutes, the doctor said, "The baby's crowning, I can see him!"

Dad darted forward to see the baby crowning.

"Oh my God!" he cried. "This is amazing! You're doing a great job, Beckett! Alexis, you've got to see this!"

I cringed, but took a step forward.

And I saw it; the head of the baby peeking out. I wasn't prepared. I honestly thought I'd be disgusted, but it was fascinating. There was the head of my baby brother, peeking out. He was almost here. And I wanted to meet him, suddenly.

"You've almost done it, Kate!" I cried.

"One more push and I'll help him out so you don't tear," the doctor said.

"Alright," Kate nodded. "Let's do this!"

She took a deep breathe, exhaled, and then took another.

"That's it!" he shouted. "That's all you need! I'm going to help the baby out!"

He assisted the baby out, and I saw the face, then the shoulders, then the chest, and then the legs.

"What do you know, we were wrong!" he cried. "Rick and Kate, you've got a healthy and beautiful baby girl!"

"What?" Kate and Dad cried in unison.

* * *

We were stunned and completely unprepared; the baby was a girl, not a boy. Noel Lovecraft Castle had a vagina.

"What do we do?" I asked. "What are you going to do about the name?"

"Well… that's just part of the plan," Dad said, rocking the baby in his arms. Kate had already held her, but had to let Dad hold her as she birthed the placenta.

"Johanna," Kate said. "My daughter's name is Johanna."

"Are you sure?" Dad asked.

"Yes, I'm sure," Kate said. "My baby girl is going to be named after my mother. I'm insisting."

"Are you sure?" Dad asked.

"Yes, I'm sure," Kate said, leaning back against the table, relaxing.

"She's Johanna," Dad said. "She's beautiful. Beautiful. Look at her!"

I peeked into Dad's arms.

What a beautiful girl. "She's a redhead!" I cried. "Can I hold her?"

"Here," Dad said, gently transferring her to my arms. "She's all full of surprises." He chuckled.

At that moment, Johanna Castle opened her eyes to look at me and I saw she had dark eyes, like Kate. I don't know what came over me, but I burst into tears. "This is my little sister!" I sobbed. "She's beautiful! Look at her! I love her!"

"Welcome to the club," Dad said.

"You're my little Jo-jo," I said, my tears dripping down my nose and splashing onto her face. "She's looking at me! I love you, Jo-jo, I love you. I have a little sister," I rambled.

I was in love. I was meant to be her big sister. She may have been my dad and Kate's baby, but she was my little sister.

"That's perfect," Kate said. "We can call her Jo-jo. Some distinction between her and Mom. I love it!"

"I'm so happy for you, Kate," I said. "Dad, I'm so happy! Jo-jo, I'm your big sister, Alexis! I'll show you everything, okay? Everything Dad and Kate can't teach you, I'll teach you, alright?" I rambled on about promises, and she closed her eyes, but I didn't care. She was my sister.

I had a sister.

It was suddenly an enormous deal. I understood the gravity of becoming a big sister, now. I was her big sister, and it was the world. I had so much to teach her as a little person. I was her big sister.

* * *

I had to share parenting responsibilities with Dad and Kate over my baby sister the next few days. I didn't mind, I wanted to. It was a need. I wasn't allowed to spend the night at the hospital with them, but I went home and went straight to bed after tweeting pictures of her to the Twitterverse. She took her first professional pictures while flipping the bird. This made me so deliriously happy, I had to share it.

I went home and went straight to bed. When I woke up, I went back to the hospital just to study Jo-jo. She was a pale little ginger baby, and we had that in common. I had to teach her to appreciate her red hair and how much fun it could be. She mostly slept, but I swore, I'd be the first person she could go to if her mom and dad weren't what she wanted to go to. I'd teach her all about boys and how to survive being so different with red hair. Dad and Kate couldn't do that. I could. Yes, there was an age difference, but I'd be the third parent. I loved her. I loved Johanna Vonnegut Castle so much.

When she was brought home, I wanted to be there to baby-sit her. To give Dad and Kate a break, as if she was kind of my baby at the same time. She was the coolest thing ever. She even gave me a toothless smile as I changed her diaper.

On Christmas Day, I brought her downstairs and we sat around the living room just watching the Macy's Christmas Parade. When she got hungry, Kate finally took her from me to nurse her. "She's so cool," I said, watching her latch onto Kate's breast.

"Wanna try my breast milk?" she teased.

"Ew!" I cried.

"I've tried it," Dad admitted. "Just like I tried yours when you were baby. It tastes kind of like a chai latte when it's still warm."

"Gross!" I cried. "Isn't that like drinking urine?"

"No!" Dad laughed. "It's part of my job as Jo-jo's father. To help with the nursing process."

"What?"

"I had to suck the milk out so they could get started," he explained.

"You guys are so gross," I muttered.

"Well, it's normal," Dad said. "Usually the father has to do that. Parents have been doing this since the beginning of time."

I watched as Jo-jo nursed so peacefully from Kate. "I've never seen this before," I admitted.

"It's fascinating, isn't it?" Dad asked. "It makes you feel really useless too. All this mother-baby bonding time and we're not included."

I felt a pang of jealousy. I wanted to be this close to a baby, who wasn't even aware of how closely I was related to her. My breasts didn't lactate and I was on the outside.

"Your day will come," Kate promised me. "She makes this face when she goes to nurse, it's so cute and only i get to see it!"

"This is the moment of motherhood that I am sad about only being the father," Dad admitted.

"_Only_ being the father?" Kate teased as Jo-jo fell asleep in her arms.

"I could watch the two of you while you're nursing all day long," Dad said. "And feel so lucky that this is us. Our love. A physical part of how I feel about you, and it's real. And physical, and she's a person. Our love brought a little person into this world, and we are so lucky."

* * *

The first week, we got so many cards and bouquets of flowers. I helped out with the thank-you notes and organizing all the presents. I loved having moments when Kate put Jo-jo into my arms. I didn't mind diapering her, either, even when she pooped. It was on New Year's Eve that we finally got the chance to leave the Loft to show Jo-jo off.

We went to a New Year's party in the Upper East side, and Kate agreed to come along with Jo-jo in her arms. I didn't blame her; she couldn't be left alone. I had no intention of leaving them alone, either.

The people at the party were so excited when we came in with Jo-jo asleep in Kate's arms. Everyone wanted to see her. Kate proudly showed her off. "This is my baby sister," I announced proudly. "Isn't she sweet?"

Then, Ellington showed up. I stuck close to Kate so that she had a buffer against Ellington. God knows, Ellington had a twisted crush on my father and would not react kindly to Jo-jo being here. I sat down beside Kate on the couch as she rocked Jo-jo in her arms, feeling a little too drunk after two cosmos to trust myself to hold her.

"I'm here for you, Jo," I whispered, running a finger over her baby-soft cheek.

"I'm so glad you came with us," Kate said. "I know you're going to be important in Jo-jo's life."

"I'm going to the restroom," I said, getting up. "I'll be back soon, Jo-jo! Bye!"

I went to the restroom and when I came out, I went to get another drink.

In the bar area, not far from the lounge where Kate was sitting, I saw Ellington talking to a group of people.

"…Can you imagine having an ugly, pasty red-headed baby and gaining that much weight?" Ellington asked. "I mean, seriously, what does Ricky Castle even see in her now, anyway! She's low-class white trash, she doesn't belong here! In the South, we'd call women like that trailer trash. She better drop that baby-weight as fast as she can- she'll have to wire her jaw shut! That's all she's got going for her!" She and her minions were giggling, like she had any room to talk with her fat ass.

I had liquid courage running through my veins. "Hey, fuck you, Ellington," I snapped, elbowing my way into her circle.

Her expression turned icy, but I was ready for a smack-down. "Excuuuuuse me?" she drawled.

"She just had a baby, that's why she's so heavy. Have you had your quadruplets yet?" I continued. "How dare you think you can horn in on a marriage five years in the making! Kate's got more class and strength than you ever will. And fuck you for talking shit about my sister, she's just a baby!"

Her lips set into a thin line as her face turned tomato-red. Suddenly, I was soaked in Chardonnay. Ellington smirked. "You look awfully good in white wine," she replied and her friends sauntered off.

I almost tore her a new one, but Dad grabbed my arm, "Come on," he said. "We were only going to stay a minute, let's go."

"Did you hear what she said?" I seethed. "I hate her! I really hate her!"

"I know," he said. "But her behavior and you being drunk is no excuse, Alexis."

On the ride home, I had mopped up the white wine and put on my coat. Jo-jo rode in the carseat right beside me. "I will never, ever let anybody talk bad about you, okay? If a group of snot-nosed little bitches try to do that to you in jr. high, let me at 'em, okay?"

"Alexis, you didn't have to do that," Kate said in a defeated tone from the front seat. "I have gained weight."

"You just had a baby," I argued.

"You know, I've never had anybody criticize me about my body before," she muttered. "I get it, now. I get how it feels to be mocked for being fat."

Dad took her hand and kissed the back of it. "Honey, don't beat yourself up," he said. "It's coming off. And I love you even if you have gained weight."

"I will knock the shit out people like Ellington when they insult you and Jo-jo," I blurted out. "I don't care-

"Alexis, you're drunk. You won't be singing this tune in the morning," Kate warned, turning around in her seat. "You gave Ellington exactly what she wanted."

* * *

I woke up on New Year's Day with a bit of a hangover from last night's drinks when Jo-jo began to cry. I stumbled to her room and saw her in the crib.

"Hey, calm down!" I sang, turning off the baby monitor and picking her up from the crib. She was so little and so new the world was unfamiliar to her. "Do you need your diaper changed?"

I took her over to the diaper-changing table and set her down, examining the state of her diaper; it was runny baby poop. She had filled it up, a complete blow-out. I cleaned her up and made sure she was powdered down. She was still crying. I assumed she was hungry, since the diaper was fresh and her clothes were clean. Kate wasn't pumping her own milk, yet.

Oh yeah. She took the baby to a party to show her off, and this is what happened. I had told Ellington Taylor to fuck off when she was griping about how Dad was still with Kate, despite being heavier from giving birth to his baby. Ellington had the nerve to call Kate fat white trash, that cunt. But, I had made a fool of myself and called her fat, too, the ultimate insult between women.

I cringed at the thought as I brought her downstairs to see if Kate had pumped any milk, yet. She hadn't.

I groaned and considered what needed to happen to get Jo-jo happy again. I knocked on the door to Dad and Kate's room and opened it up.

"Hi," I said. "Jo-jo's awake and hungry, I think. There's no breast milk in the freezer."

I heard Kate groan and she sat up. "Just a second," she muttered.

I went over to her side of the bed. Dad moaned and rolled over. She took Jo-jo from me and unbuttoned her top so she could nurse. "Is that better, Jo?" she asked groggily. Jo-jo quieted down and began to nurse.

"I'm sorry about last night," I admitted.

"I know," Kate said. "God, I've always been so secure in my body. And last night…"

"I don't know who the hell Ellington Taylor thinks she is," I said. "She may have never had kids, but she's bigger than you."

Kate sighed. "I get it, now. The helplessness of being fat and how it feels."

"But that was inexcusable," I said. "It was so wrong."

Kate shook her head. "God… I've never knowingly picked on anybody who was overweight, but it hurts. So bad. God, I've never felt so ugly and ashamed ever before."

"But you're not," I said. "You're just post-pardum, that's all."

"Yeah, I know," she said. "They say your looks go when you have a baby."

"You'll get them back," I promised.

"You never stopped being beautiful," Dad muttered from the other side of the bed.

"I hope so," she muttered. "I felt like I didn't deserve to be with Rick, like everybody was looking at me and thinking that… It felt so awful. Once my doctor clears me, I'm going back into my training program again. I've got to set a good example for Jo-jo and myself if I want to go back to work."

I laid there and watched Jo-jo nurse, feeling the ache that I'm sure Kate was feeling at the same time, too.

"You know I'm right beside you," I promised. "I'll be damned if I let a bitch like Ellington say something bad about you."

"I know. But Alexis, it's not your fight okay? Don't get into this bullshit drama Ellington's starting."

* * *

Within a few days, Kate was feeling better, not so depressed. It seemed Ellington was fading from my mind by the first week of January. I asked if I could bring Jo-jo to meet with my friends for brunch, and Kate declined; she didn't like the breast-pump and she liked the baby nearby.

I went on to the restaurant for brunch, and waited on my friends.

They were late. Fifteen minutes late. Then, twenty.

"_Mademoiselle_," the French-speaking hostess said. "If your party does not show, we'll need to have your table for other customers."

"I'm sorry," I said, checking my phone. "They'll be here soon enough."

She pursed her lips and walked away.

Finally, my phone rang: it was Tara.

"Tara!" I cried. "Where are you?"

"I'm on my way," she said. "I've been trying to talk Nina and Jules into coming to the brunch."

"What's going on?"

"Alexis, do you have any idea what's being said about you?"

"No."

Tara sighed. "Look, I'll be there soon. Can you turn our table into a two-person table?"

"Oh, sure," I said, feeling a little sick. What had I done?

The hostess moved me to a small, two-person table and I waited on Tara. She finally arrived, but her expression was sympathetic.

"Hi, Tara," I said. "Sit down. What's going on?"

"Jules and Nina believe that you've been slumming with the Lindo's servants," she began.

"What?"

"Christina Crossamer ran a blind item this morning in her gossip column," she said. "You didn't see it?"

I shook my head, feeling sick.

"Here," she said, getting out her iPad and pulling something up.

I read with shaking hands.

_BLIND ITEM: A certain mystery writer's ginger daughter with a foul reputation picked a fight with one of his many exgirlfriends at a New Year's Party in the Upper East Side. She apparently wanted to hurt his girlfriend, although her father's gotten married and had a little one recently. His daughter has been seeing the help to soothe her sexual insecurities, so much so that she got a drink flung in her face. Too bad she can't see how silly it is to sleep with butlers and maids with her Columbia education._

My jaw dropped. How could this not be me?

"I'm not sleeping with the help!" I cried. "And Ellington was making fun of Kate for gaining weight while she was pregnant and calling her trash, I just rushed to her defense!"

"Alexis!" Tara moaned. "Didn't you figure out that you should never directly attack anybody in the Old Money circle?"

I blushed. I did. I knew better. "I was drunk. And Ellington's not Old Money, she's _nouveau riche_."

Tara groaned aloud and I felt even worse.

"What did you expect?" she asked. "For Ellington to not present her sob story to Christy? She's in good with Old Money whores because they think she knows everything about sex that they'd like to be doing but aren't."

"I don't know," I muttered.

"Maybe you should stop drinking," she said. "This was really dumb. They'll never forget that at Christy's column!"

I had been so stupid about that. Of course, Ellington was going to cry to anybody who'd believe her side of these story. I had messed up everything so badly.


	11. Chapter 11

_Disclaimer- I still don't own Castle, Andrew Marlowe does, and I don't want him to sue me for playing in his sandbox. I'm just having fun, I make no moneys._

* * *

I felt like Carrie Bradshaw in that episode of _Sex and City_ where it's her birthday, but nobody shows up to the dinner. Almost all of my friends thought I was a hapless bisexual slut hell-bent on harming their favorite erotica writer. Then, my baby sister was sick, and it felt like nobody else was even talking to me. Even Allison had backed away from me after that stupid blind item ran in early January. I had never felt so forgotten on my birthday in my entire life.

I tried to make myself feel better by shopping, and I ended up buying four dresses between BCBG Max Azria and Bebe and a pair of shoes, too, my first pair of Louboutons earned with my own money. When I left the last store, I felt good for only a moment. And then the depression and forgotten feeling came back.

I had been banished from Dad's Loft because Jo-jo had some mystery illness that made her temperature go up too high and was rubbing her ear. Dad and Kate panicked and were taking her to the ER tonight. Grams was busy with _Hocus Pocus_, and worst of all, my best friends were all skipping my twenty-first birthday. The only one who called me with an excuse was Tara, who was stuck on a train due to the snowstorm between Boston and New York.

"Don't worry about it," I had told her. "Nobody else is coming tonight."

"Do you want me to come over to your apartment once I get to New York?"

"No, that's okay," I said. "I'm just going to get drunk and go to bed."

"Oh, honey," she said. "I'm sorry."

"I understand."

"I love you," she said.

"I love you, too."

I bought two bottles of wine and walked home to my apartment, climbing the steps to my front door alone. I noticed the door to my place was open. Someone was making dinner, and it smelled heavenly.

"Hi," Ben said when I glanced in the door. "Happy Birthday, darlin'."

"Ben!" I cried, my eyes filling with tears, dropping my shopping bags. "How did you know?"

"Your dad's Twitter," he said. "You look like you've had a rough day."

"I have," I sighed, feeling my tears gather in my eyes. He wrapped his arms around me and kissed my temple.

"What happened?"

"My best friends think I attacked Ellington Taylor for no good reason. And that I'm bisexual. That whore attacked Kate for gaining baby weight and said Jo-jo was ugly. That bitch!"

"She sounds like one," Ben agreed. "You're not bisexual though, are you? Because if you are, I'm down with that."

"No," I snorted.

"Sorry, sorry!" he cried, throwing his hands up in the air. "The military's not homo-free, despite what you mighta' heard. And the idea of you with another girl is actually… kinda hot."

I rolled my eyes. "You men, fantasizing about lesbians."

"Okay, yeah, I fantasize about you. Sometimes. I'm male, what do you expect?"

"I don't know," I muttered, shutting the door. "This birthday really sucks so far."

"Your friends will come around. Or, you'll make new friends that won't believe those rumors and won't care."

"It's so… sucky. Even my parents can't take me out for my first legal drink. And I got the call that my book's release date has been delayed because Ellington's stupid soft-core porno movie coming out that month and they don't want the release of _Benefits_ competing with it. I know Karé tells me not to worry about it and to trust the marketing department at Harper-Collins, but I _do_ worry… You know, I wish you had told me you were coming by, I'd have cleaned up my apartment."

"It's fine," he said. "My apartment looks like an atomic bomb went off. Well, that's what my stepfather used to tell me about my room."

"I can't believe you made dinner. All by yourself, too. It smells so good."

"Well, I'm pretty poor; it's only pork, potatoes, feta, and spinach. Why don't you go take a bath and I'll bring you wine or a joint? We can eat when you're done with the bath."

"Okay," I nodded. In my bathroom, there was already a steaming hot bath waiting for me that smelled heavenly and had rose petals on the surface. I was overwhelmed that he had thought of making up for my birthday like this. I took off my clothes and got into the salty, bath-oil water. I twisted my hair up into a knot and laid back down with a handtowel over the edge as a pillow for my head. I cried for a few minutes and wiped my tears with another washcloth, cleaning my make-up off. I was lost as to what to do: it felt like everything was shit right now. A moment later, Ben knocked on the door.

"I've got your wine," he said, entering the bathroom with a full glass and the bottle.

"Thanks," I said, accepting it. "Leave the bottle, I'll probably finish it myself. God, tonight ended horribly. Twenty-first birthdays are supposed to be a rite of passage where you get plastered off your ass and all your friends are laughing at you, and you puke until morning, but they're all there for you because they love you. And your parents sometimes join in on it."

"Not everybody's twenty-first birthdays are like that," Ben said, sitting down beside the tub, getting a joint and a lighter out of his pocket.

"That's what I wanted mine to be," I admitted, taking a gulp of my wine. "I feel like writing this book has brought me nothing but trouble. I've never been this sad for this long."

"A lot's changed since then," he admitted, taking a drag. He handed it to me, but I declined. I didn't feel like drinking _and_ smoking tonight. "I bet you still would have pissed off Ellington when she talked smack about Kate and Jo-jo at Christmas, anyway."

I took another unladylike gulp of my wine and coughed to stop my tears. "She threw a glass of wine on me. I was drunk, too. I'd have never said something so shitty if I hadn't been drunk."

"I've said dumb shit while drunk, too. How bad was it?"

"She called Kate white trash. Like Kate's a whore and slept her way into marrying Dad, and Dad still can't keep it in his pants since they got married. She and Dad have been partners for five years, long before she showed any interest in him. Ellington's so illiterate that she probably hasn't even read the Nikki Heat novels!" I punched the water so hard, it splashed everywhere.

"She's a terrible writer, I agree. She probably hasn't ever read anything beyond bodice rippers and bad fanfiction. Do you want me to wash your hair for you?" he asked, stubbing out the joint for later.

"Yeah. That would be nice."

He reached for the plastic cup on the other side of my head as I sat up to take down the knot of my hair. It was awkward and it must have been uncomfortable for him.

"This would be a lot easier if you were in here with me," I told him. "The water feels great."

"I haven't taken a bath since I was a little kid. It's like me-soup. Kinda gross."

"Yet, you drew a bath for me."

"Alright," Ben said, standing up, pulling his belt buckle. "I'll try it again." I sat up and hugged my knees to my chest as he disrobed and climbed in behind me. His legs were so long he couldn't straighten them in the tub. Instead, they rested around my hips. "Well... this isn't so bad," he admitted, filling up the plastic cup with hot water to pour of my head from the tap.

I had never had a bath with a grown man before. I know I had suggested it, but this was so different, so intimate, even if we weren't having sex right now. Would he expect sex out of me sometime tonight at this point? I really didn't feel like it.

"Why are you being so nice to me tonight?" I asked. "I've cock-blocked you for a few weeks."

"Sex isn't everything," he said. "Which one's the shampoo?"

"The one that says 'shampoo' on it."

"That's my girl. My smart-ass girl. The bottles are the same color, can you blame me?"

He washed my hair and then I had to explain to him how to use the conditioner. "You leave it in for a few minutes to get deeper conditioning. It makes the ends of your hair softer, so they don't get brittle and break," I explained. "Don't you at least use shampoo?"

"I use whatever's on sale not this Redken stuff. It smells nice, though. If I run out, I just resort to soap."

"That's awful for your hair!"

"I'm poor, this is what poor people do," he retorted. "And besides, I usually shave my hair off every few months when it grows over my ears. I don't have hair like yours. Yours is so long and soft… and beautiful. I just want to bury my face in it sometimes."

"If that's what gets you excited…"

"See?" he responded. "If I can just get you to smart-off, you'll feel better."

"What was your twenty-first birthday like?" I asked, leaning against his chest. He wrapped his arms around me.

"I was studying for finals," he said. "And then, I got into the Marines and shipped out to boot camp before I had a chance to get wasted."

"So you never got trashed for your birthday? I didn't know you finished college early."

"Yes, that's true. I just got trashed when I got out basic four months later. Of course, I was shipped off to Afghanistan for combat the next week. I skipped a year in college because I worked really hard at Vandy, so I was a baby when I got into combat. Like most of us were."

"I must seem like a complete, spoiled nutcase."

"If I didn't know you very well, yeah, you would."

"I guess I'm just hormonal right now."

"You're a human being who values relationships. And you're upset that people don't value you back when they hear something bad about you from somebody who hates you, so that shit must be true. I understand. I really do. MBA was bad about that. Most prep schools were anyway."

"What was it like?" I asked. "Boot camp? Were you lonely?"

"I guess so. But I stopped thinking about myself and my needs. When I got discharged, it was a strange situation. I had to quit thinking about the group, but me, instead. It was weird. I guess I'm feeling the things I ran away from right now."

"Why did you get discharged?"

"I lost function in one of my kidneys. And my hearing in one ear. It was an honorable medical discharge. I served for five years before the accident."

"I never knew that about you."

"Yeah, well…"

"Which ear is it?"

"My left ear. Ever notice why I always want to be on your left? So I can hear you."

"What happened?"

"I've told you; shrapnel wounds."

He combed my hair into a ponytail, pulling it slightly. I helped him with knotting it on my head so the cold, wet locks didn't drip on either of us in the tub.

"It was a landmine someone two men ahead of me stepped on. First guy was blown to bits, the second died from taking most of the shrapnel. I survived."

"That's where the scars on your back come from, don't they?"

"Yeah. We were programmed to think like brothers. We were brothers in arms. The Marine Corps was my family when I had none."

I took his tattooed arm and scrubbed it, looking at the different drawings etched into his skin. "Are any of your tattoos for them?"

"The one in Latin, it means 'and some gave all.' I tend to take a Vonnegut reaction to military service. War sucks. We're not heroes, just doing the work of old, rich white men. And paying with our lives."

"Wanna go out and get another tattoo?" I asked. "I'm up for it."

"Expanding on your 'sleeve'?"

"Ha ha. Maybe that's how I need to commemorate my twenty-first birthday."

"Don't get a tattoo just because you're feeling sad. Those are the worse tattoos to get because it's a constant reminder. Bad feelings will pass. But if you get a tattoo of it, it'll be a forever reminder and bring you down every time you see it."

I sighed. "I can't shake this feeling. That I need to be perfect, and then everybody will love me. And then, I'll be happy because all the love in my life is perfect."

"We're children of divorce. It will always feel that way."

"I'm lucky, I know it; my dad's always been crazy about me. And I've got a fantastic grandmother who's always been in my life… but sometimes, they're not happy. My mom rarely remembers me at all, that's the bite, you know? And I wish I could make them all happy. I feel like I've been giving and giving and giving lately, but I'm getting nothing back. What if Jo-jo is the only thing that will make my dad and Kate happy? And not me?"

"Allie, we don't always get the parents we need. We all deserve two parents who are crazy about us at all times. And sometimes, in divorce, we don't always end up feeling like that."

"Why? I try to be the perfect daughter and baby-sitter and friend and..."

"You can't expect people to keep track of the good things you've done for them. They just think you're doing a nice thing for them and you're a nice person until you start getting offended that they didn't do something nice in return for you."

"Are you saying I'm not a nice person?" I bristled.

"No, what I'm saying is that you shouldn't do good deeds with an expectation of return. Nobody owes you anything and in the end, you'll be tapped out and not able to give to the important things."

He squeezed me in his arms and I cried a little; for all that I had expected, all that I had done, all that I couldn't do. And finally, I cried because I just needed to be needed.

* * *

After we got out of the tub and I put on my bathrobe and he put on his pants and a t-shirt, we had dinner. He was a decent cook, it turned out. It was a bit salty, but the best pork loin I had ever eaten. Maybe it was the whiff of marijuana that I had inhaled that was making me so hungry, but it was one of the most satisfying meals of my life.

He let me drink the rest of the bottle of wine and I went to the bed to wait on him. He got in bed with me, only to give me the best massage of my life with a bottle of lotion from my bathroom. I asked if he could bring me the rest of the wine and I relaxed, feeling like a limp noodle and not caring that I was completely naked in front of him with the lights on. He dug the heel of his palm deep into the muscle in the back of my thigh, all the way up to my butt cheek. It hurt for a second, and then it felt wonderful. I moaned.

"That feels great," I admitted. "I carry my stress right there and the small of my back. And my shoulders."

"Lets me get that for you," he said. He kneaded the small of my back with his thumbs and worked his way out. The tension ebbed away. "It's a wonder you can even walk, Allie."

"I carry my stress around there and my back," I admitted. "I carry so much of it."

He worked his thumbs in little, deep circles up the sides of my spine. I moaned again, feeling my legs and hips go limp.

"Where'd you learn this?"

"Just picked it up," he said softly. I heard him pop open the lotion and squirt a little more into his hands before I smelled it. Then, he tried again with the small of my back. "Different girlfriends like this. Each one's different."

"How am I different?"

"Where you carry your stress. I've never met a woman who carries it in her legs. Back and shoulders? All the time." He dug the heel of his palms into the small of my back and pressed hard on his way up to the bottoms of my shoulder blades and repeated it. I cried out in the pain, and then relief. The lotion provided the lubrication we needed. I giggled at the thought of lube. "What's so funny?"

"I just thought about lube," I admitted. "For some reason."

"You think you'll need some tonight?"

"No, not like that. Lube was so funny to me in high school. I guess it still is."

"It's useful during sex, though. Trust me. You know how hard I work to get a woman turned on, but sometimes, it's impossible, but she still wants to fuck. No shame in it."

"Well, the way it's used in porn, I don't want to give a guy a big opinion of himself."

"See, I love that you can talk about watching porn with me and not be ashamed of it. You're one of my few female friends that does."

"You're my one and only, Ben."

"Har, har."

He voluntarily got out of bed and came back holding two red wine glasses and the bottle, completely naked.

For a moment, I stunned by his naked form. I had seen naked men before, and I had seen him, but never in the daylight. I felt the beat of my heart in my chest thud hard; he was different. I wanted to make love to him, to experience him. Before, it was just getting a need to be satisfied, but now...

"You're okay?" he asked me, breaking me from my thoughts.

"Yeah," I murmured. I pulled back the covers and he set my computer up on the DVD player. We watched part of _the Lives of Others_, a German foreign film, and we drank the rest of the wine together. When the movie was over, he held me in the cold night and we fell asleep drunk and completely enamoured with each other. We did have sex, and I felt so much better, so satisfied. My friends not being around and my family ditching me didn't matter. This was the relationship I wished I had with Pi while we were co-habitating. I was ready to return all this love and affection and care for Ben, to make him feel how grateful I was right this second.

"Has anybody ever told you that you're so pale you glow in the dark?" he asked me after we had had sex.

I rolled my eyes. "All the time."

He brushed my hair out of my eyes. "You remind me of my idea of Artemis."

"The Greek goddess?"

"Yes. She was the goddess of the moon."

"Oh. I can't remember it."

"She was a virgin goddess and the goddess of the hunt, too. A lot of men and gods tried to rape her, but she usually outsmarted them or turned them into hunted animals, and let her hounds devour them."

"Oh."

"She made a promise to her father to stay a virgin."

"Oh. That sucks."

"Oral doesn't count, right?"

I chuckled. We laid there for a long time, and he pulled the covers off me to just watch me and to stroke my arms and my hip. As silly as it sounded, he made me feel like a goddess. It didn't matter anymore that I hadn't had any celebration on my birthday. I felt special. I wanted to make him feel it, too. "Ben? Can I just tell you I love you tonight and we'll pretend it's true? Even though it's not?"

"Yeah, Allie. That's fine."

"I love you."

"I love you, too."

* * *

The next morning, I opened my eyes. Unlike yesterday, sunshine was streaming through the window and Ben was asleep on the other side of the bed. I rolled over to check my phone, and it said it was almost nine-thirty.

I remembered how silly I was being last night, how depressed and melodramatic. I sighed and sat up; I didn't have any clothes on. We had been very vulnerable and intimate last night. I couldn't remember letting any guy before Ben in on my worst insecurities, and it was alright. He hadn't deserted me in the middle of the night, either. The idea of continuing that with him, forever and ever… I didn't need to ask him to be more than friends. Maybe we did love each other, like we had said the night before. He was more than I could have imagined in a relationship. Was this even real? It was too good to be true. I turned around and gazed at Ben, who was drooling on my second pillow.

"I can feel you watchin' me," Ben mumbled, his eyes staying shut.

"I know," I said, laying back down. He didn't move, just snored slightly.

"Ben?"

"Yeah?"

"My number's five."

"What?"

"The number of men I've slept with. Including you."

"That's cute."

"Cute?" I asked, surprised.

He opened his eyes and smiled. "You're just getting started."

I snuggled in closer to him. "I owe you sexual favors after last night."

"No. You don't owe me anything."

"I know. But I want to, now."

At that moment, I heard something I didn't want to hear; the door buzzer.


	12. Chapter 12

_Disclaimer- I still don't own Castle, Andrew Marlowe does, and I don't want him to sue me for playing in his sandbox._

* * *

"Ugh," I groaned. "I don't want to talk to anybody but you."

The doorbuzzed again. "Ignore it," he coached, wrapping an arm around me and pulling me in closer, despite my morning breath. He kissed me deeply. I could feel the lust pooling between my legs.

Then, my phone rang. It was Dad. Could it be… could he be outside my apartment?

"Oh shit," I whispered, picking up my cell phone. "Hello?"

"Hi, honey, we thought we'd surprise you since last night was a bust."

"Are you downstairs?" I asked.

"Yes. Jo-jo's feeling much better, her fever's gone. we thought we'd come by."

I gasped.

"Can we come up? We brought Tara."

"I got pretty drunk last night and my apartment's a mess!" I apologized. "Really, just don't. I'm going to get dressed really fast and-"

"The cold isn't good for Jo-jo's ear," Kate was telling Dad in the background. _Shiiit._ I couldn't keep them outside until I got dressed.

"Alexis, we weren't anticipating keeping Jo outside after her ear infection. We're coming up.

The phone went dead and I panicked. "My family's coming up; I can't stop them, the cold is hurting the baby's ear."

"What?" Ben asked, sitting up and rubbing his eyes with the heel of his palms.

"You have to hide," I hissed. "Dad, come on up."

Ben shot up from the bed with me.

"I have to hide?" Ben cried, looking around for his clothes.

"As far as my parents know, we are just friends! You cannot be here!"

He dove into the closet and I grabbed my bathrobe right as I heard the key turn in the door. Kate was cooing "there we go!" to Jo-jo, covering up her head with the snowsuit that made her look like a teddy-bear. Jo-jo was crying in her arms. "Ears are all covered!"

"Happy Belated Birthday, honey," Dad said.

"If you guys don't mind, I was just about to jump in the shower," I apologized. "I'll try to get ready fast."

"Well, we kind of surprised you," Kate admitted.

"Hi, Alexis!" Tara sang. She hugged me, swinging a colorful present sack in her arms. "I'm sorry I missed your birthday! Thank you for being so understanding last night! We'll make up for it!"

"Thanks, Tars," I said, trying not to hug her too hard, since I was only in a bathrobe. "Don't even think about trying to help me clean up, okay? I made this mess and I will try to get ready as fast as I can."

"Oh my God! Castle!" Kate cried. "I think we don't packed any more fresh diapers in Jo-jo's baby bag, can you run down to the drug store and pick up some more before we need them?"

"Oh sure," Dad said. "Be right back."

"I'll be ready in a blink of an eye!" I called after him as he ran downstairs. "I swear!"

I went to my room and opened up the closet. "I've got to get something," I told Ben. He was sitting naked on the floor, fiddling with one of my shoes, glowering at me. I grabbed a dress and he looked up at me with irritation. "I'm so sorry!" I whispered.

"Fuck you for making me sit in the bottom of the closet buck naked," he hissed.

I took the dress into the bathroom and got showered and my make-up on as quickly as possible. I dressed in a flash and when I got out of the bathroom, I opened the closet again. Ben was still sitting there, annoyed. "I'll text you once we're gone," I whispered, tossing his phone at him.

"I hate you," he whispered, glowering at me. "I'm freezing my nuts off here!"

I shut the door, guiltily.

"Okay, everybody, I'm ready!" I called out, entering the living room. I saw one of Ben's boots peeking out from under the couch. I hoped he'd find them. And his clothes were in a pile on the kitchen floor. Ugh, I hoped nobody noticed it. Dad wasn't back, yet.

"I'm so glad, let's go," Kate said, standing up. Tara was holding Jo-jo. "Come on, we can't leave fast enough!"

"What?" Tara asked, surprised.

"I'm starving!" Kate sang out.

"I'll lock up," I said, opening the door, letting Kate and Tara out, first. As I was locking up, Dad came out of the elevator, holding a Duane Ready sack. "Where are we going?"

"For a birthday breakfast," Kate said. "At the Cosmic Diner. It'll be fun!"

"Does the baby need a diaper change?" Dad asked.

"We can check her in the diner," Kate said.

We hailed and cab, Tara and I got settled in the back of the van and let Dad and Kate take the middle seats. I texted Ben that I was gone and he could let himself out.

"You seem kind of jumpy," Tara noted. "Are you okay?"

"I am," I said.

"I should have come over last night," she said.

"No, you shouldn't have!" I said too loudly. Dad and Kate turned around in their seats. "I mostly slept. And took a bath. And got drunk. Dad?"

"Yeah, honey?"

"Thank you for taking me out this morning!"

"We felt terrible about yesterday, so we need to make it up to you."

"Jo-jo needed to go to the doctor," I said. "It's alright. I understand. It was a rough night anyway."

* * *

After a corny breakfast where the waiter sang a birthday song to me while doing an Elvis impression, Grams came in, tired as hell. I was served pancakes with some birthday candles in them and the whole restaurant sang Happy Birthday to me. I went to the bathroom, only to have Kate run into me, holding Jo-jo.

"So who is he?" she asked.

"Who?"

"The guy who spent the night with you?"

I thought about denying it, but I knew Kate would call me on my bullshit if I even tried. "He's a friend. How did you know?"

"The two wine classes, the men's clothes in the corner of the kitchen, the size twelve boots under the couch," she said, setting Jo-jo down on the diaper changing station. "Why do you think I sent your father for diapers? I'm a detective, remember?" She started taking Jo-jo's tights off to change her diaper.

"He's a good friend. A really kind man. And I like him a lot."

"Not Ben from Thanksgiving?"

"Yes, Ben from Thanksgiving."

"Are you sure?" she asked. "You're sleeping with a friend-"

"No, we weren't sleeping together last night. I mean, we weren't having sex." That was true... technically. "He just came over and made dinner. And was hiding in my closet when you guys showed up."

She snorted. "I'm sorry, I had no idea."

"Why are you laughing?"

"If I told you, you'd probably cringe, but like father, like daughter."

"What?" I asked, confused.

"Nevermind. The doctor told us not to take Jo-jo out into the cold for long periods of time if we could help it, sorry we had to barge in. We could have stayed in the hallway if you had told your father you had company and he didn't want to meet us just yet."

"You could have called ahead."

"Again, I'm sorry. I really didn't think you did anything last night, honestly." She had Jo-jo's diaper changed completely and was dressing the baby again. "I won't tell your dad."

"Why not?"

"Well… That's your story," she said. "Your secret. I understand the need for privacy."

"You do?"

"Yeah," she zipped up Jo-jo's little snow suit. "It's your life. You'll tell your father when you want to."

* * *

Grams had to leave first, she had a final rehearsal for _Hocus Pocus_ that was opening tonight, and didn't want to run late. We stopped in front of the theatre that had a block of an ad of Grams and her costars in their promoshoot costume attire and took a picture, which Dad posted on Instagram with, _Forgot to get a picture with Grams at Alexis's Birthday breakfast. This'll do!_ as the caption.

I checked my texts as we went back to Dad and Kate's apartment to open presents. Ben had let himself out just fine and saw Dad's Instagram pic of us on Broadway. He told me it was cute, so I assumed he had forgiven me.

"I know you're seeing somebody," Tara told me when we took Jo-jo upstairs to be put down for a nap. "Either that or you're doing something you don't want the world knowing about."

"Can I just keep it a secret for now?" I replied, not wanting to explain the entire relationship between Ben and me.

"The more secrets you keep from us, how can you expect us not to believe the rumors?" Tara asked.

I felt like I had been punched in the stomach. Ben and I had talked about this last night, and I know that I hadn't done any of those stupid things. "Real friends aren't going to believe the rumors," I replied. "My word should be good enough."

"You're not talking to us. You're always too busy. And then you expect us to be there for your birthday, does it make any sense why we think you're being suspicious of all the awful things that are going on in the gossip columns?"

I sighed.

"I'm sticking by your side and not ganging up with Jules and Nina on this, but seriously, Alexis, we're your best friends. You can't trust us?"

She was right; I should have been able to trust my best friends with my secrets, but I had promised myself I wouldn't tell them anything about the book. This book was ruining my life. The most honest relationship I had right now was with Ben because he knew everything, but nobody knew I was seeing him. Secrets were not conducive to good relationships, I decided. "I'll tell you this much;" I began, "it's a project."

"Oh really?" Tara asked, surprised. "What is it?"

"I can't tell you. The nature of it is secret."

"You've gotta give me a hint."

"What?"

"I can't tell! I don't want you guessing! Can I at least have some privacy? It's not something I want everybody knowing. Don't you have things like that?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. I guess."

"Don't be insulted," I added. "It's just private. I know we swore in seventh grade we wouldn't keep secrets, but this is just something I'm not ready to bring out in the light of day."

* * *

That night, we went to the final preview show of _Hocus Pocus_ before the official premiere. We managed to squeeze another ticket in to bring Tara along.

Grams was amazing. She was born for this part, it was true. If anybody could have taken the reigns from Bette Middler and made the part her own, it was my grandmother. When she made her first appearance on stage, the crowd applauded. She stood there, glowering in character until the applaused stopped, and then started her lines. I was completely enthralled when she and the other two Sanderson Sisters flew on their besoms across the stage with a wind machines making their capes billow. It looked like rippling water. The special effects made the audience gasp. When Thackery Binx and his sister walked into the sunrise at the end and the play was over, I was sad. It was like finishing a great book and wanting to reread it immediately. When Grams came out to take her bow, the preview audience applauded for a good three minutes straight and gave her a standing ovation. I think it was official: _Wicked_'s reign over Broadway was over and it was my grandmother leading the charge. I would have changed my last name back to Rogers that night if I could have.

At the after party, Tara and I scored some free champagne and she stuck near me. "You won't tell me what your big secret is, will you?" she asked.

I shook my head. "Not yet. But you will find out. In time."

The crowd suddenly started applauding and the DJ announced something. "Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present the toast of Broadway, our star herself, Winnifred Sanderson, Martha Rogers!" Grams came down the stairs in a glittery gold dress. And I don't think I've ever seen anybody look so beautiful.

* * *

I had to go to the March book festival for the Romance Writers Incorporated Association. The tickets were $35 a piece, but Karé had comped my ticket. I was going alone. Karé encouraged me to make friends here with some of the writers, she said it definitely helped.

I rounded the convention center's floor and met writers at their stations, signing and giving away copies of their books. The best idea I had had was to bring along a cloth grocery sack to hold all the books I got from swag. I wished I could have shared the event with somebody. Like Tara, the only one of my prep school friends that were still talking to me.

Allison had come back around, and most of her backing off was in my head. She had been trying to organize her grandmother's birthday party in Chicago, and had to take over for her drunk mother. She apologized profusely over that over a bottle of wine at my place. She loved my apartment and helped me with repainting it in February with her boyfriend. Ben showed up with some turpentine and rags, too. The four of us got pretty high from the fumes and realized it was a terrible idea to paint in the winter when we couldn't stand the cold air from the open windows. I wished I could have gotten a friend go with me to this convention, though. Ben could have benefited from meeting literary agents. He refused to accept me putting in a good word to agents for his book, and refused to share it with anybody.

After saying hello to Karé, who was there talking to other writers and reading their query letters to give feedback, I struck up some conversation with a few writers. Admitting I was agented but hadn't published anything yet was a great hook and distinguished me from random readers just looking for free swag. They told me to follow them on twitter and we could talk some more. Finally, one of the New Adult writers, Kathleen Kessler, a slightly heavy, but pretty young woman from Pennsylvania, told me that she was about to go to guest on a panel and invited me to go see it.

The panel was in a smaller room with folding chairs set up for the audience. Three other authors were waiting, and the moderator started the panel.

I was enthralled with all the advice they gave out about research and basically becoming as much of an expert as you could on a subject before writing about it; romance readers were quite intelligent and would call you out if you didn't research like you should have. The topic shifted to publishing and getting an agent.

"Didn't E.K. Taylor self-publish her book?" one of thee other writers asked.

"Yeah, I think she did. And then, it sold so well she got an agent and then got it released with one of the big 5," Kathleen Kress said.

A woman stood up. "Stop talking about my boo-ook!" she whined melodramatically. My skin crawled; it was Ellington. "Everyone, I'm so sorry, but I have to stick up for my baby!" She stumbled across the row of audience member she was sitting it and kept on rambling until she reached the stage and grabbed the microphone from one of the women on the panel. She had the balls to start talking about publishing her book.

It struck me; she had just crashed the panel, uninvited. And I had witnessed it. Kathleen Kessler's pretty face had contorted to anger at Ellington crashing her panel. How rude!

I got out my phone and opened the Twitter app.

_E.K. Taylor is a train wreck. Why in the hell is she is crashing other NA writer's panels uninvited? Just watched it happen._ I tweeted from the Candace Witherspoon account I had created. There. That felt better.

A moment later, I saw that Karé had retweeted and favorited my tweet, and I smirked. I caught her gaze in the middle of the room, and she smirked and winked at me.

Ellington hadn't stopped talking about where she found her inspiration and how important it was to get her book published and out of her head. I had never heard someone babble like her before, she wasn't even giving advice, it was as if she was responding to an interviewer in her own head.

And then, my phone started blowing up; my tweet was going viral and being retweeted by accounts all over the Twittersphere; twenty so far. I gulped.

_Oh shit,_ I thought._ Shit, shit, shit._

One of Ellington's minions scampered up to the stage and whispered something in her ear and she frowned. My follower count started rising as Ellington's face turned a darker and darker shade of pink, she looked furious.

I shoved my phone in my purse and tried not to make any sudden movements. The audience was bustling and whispering. She glowered and finally spoke: "It seems some people think I'm speaking up uninvited. Well, I cannot stand it when people lie about my book!" she snapped, her Southern accent slurring. "I want to know where this person is! Who's talking shit about me on Twitter when I'm up here, hung on the cross, all defenseless!?"

"Candace Witherspoon!" somebody shouted from the audience.

_Oh shit oh shit oh shit._ For a moment, I thought my identity was exposed and somehow, she knew. I was afraid she'd use those acrylic claws to rip me to shreds, but when her eyes scanned the room, they didn't land on me. Thank goodness!

"Well, I don't know who this Candace Witherspoon is, but I'm following her the moment I get to my phone," Kathleen said into her mic, a smug look on her face as she smirked at Ellington. Ellington glared back at her.

"Well," she snapped. "See if I ever do another panel for my fans ever again."

She stormed out and a few of her followers went after her. Grinning to myself, I got out my phone; my followers had jumped from 25 to 200 in a matter of minutes.

_EKT just said, 'Well, see if I ever do another panel for my fans ever again' & stormed out. Wasn't your panel anyway. Have some respect for other writers._ I tweeted.

A few moments after I sent out that tweet, I heard a few audience members laughing, and saw people showing others around them their smart phone screens. I want to stand up and introduce myself as Candance Witherspoon, but I knew I couldn't. I checked Ellington's twitter page, and it was blocked. She had blocked me.

"Why don't we get back to the subject of the panel?" Kathleen asked. The audience hooted and clapped, and the authors continued.

The panel continued, the panelists were relieved and grinning. I couldn't believe an event like that was making my life better already. Then, some hateful tweets started coming my way. I couldn't believe I was in the middle of a Twitter war and nobody knew it was really me.

I logged out of Candace's account and into my own to see what Ellington said about my tweets, since the hater-aide was coming in, now. To be honest, it wasn't so bad; a lot of people were following me, now. And nobody knew Candace was actually me.

_Some wannabe writer has said some ugly things about me. Fans, dont worry, well get her n the end._

She was threatening me? I logged out of my account and back into Candace's, sending her a tweet, even though I was blocked from her account.

_Bitch say what? OfficialEKT just threatened me for calling her out on disrespecting KathyKess & co. at their own panel?_

This was going too well. Way too well.

A moment later, I saw Kathleen Kessler had followed me, and so had the other panellists.

Score.

People were retweeting Candace left and right.

_And OfficialEKT? I could get you arrested for threatening violence on me. Check yourself before you wreck yourself._ I tweeted.

The panelists were looking at Kathleen's phone and they were laughing. I could only assume it was at Candace's tweet. The general disruption in the audience was too funny. Finally, the moderator calmed everyone down and called the panel back to order. "Everybody, let's settle down. Any other questions for the panel that don't have to do with E.K. Taylor?"

Candace's followers kept on rising. I had over 600 followers by the time the panel was over, and my retweets were growing exponentially.

Karé grabbed my arm as I was walking out from the panel. "That. Was brilliant."

"Couldn't have done it without you," I whispered back and kissed her on the cheek before leaving the room. Karé laughed behind me.

Holy crap, this was awesome.

* * *

When I arrived home later, Ben was waiting for me over a broiled chicken breast recipe from his mother's recipe box.

"How nice, you do the cooking and I'll be the man, getting a beer and sitting down to watch TV."

"I think what you did to E.K. Taylor was epic! You deserve a home-cooked meal for that!"

"Aww, thank you," I said, as he handed me a beer and I sat my purse and swag bag down. I took a swig of my beer.

"Besides, you made me a sandwich... that one time."

"Oh, how can I forget? This evens the playing field, along with my birthday. I tell you what; I'll do something nice for you."

"Watching Ellington is still stewing over is _all that I need_. I've been refreshing her live feed and it's hysterical. She's really got her panties in a bunch."

"Well, I've gotten a few hate messages from her minions."

"Sheeple. I hope you don't mind I brought some condoms for tonight, because seriously, you're all I wanna do!"

"Bringing down smutty jerks who can't write bondage turns you on?"

Ben's hands cupped my ass, and he pressed me close. His lips met mine, and I moaned into the kiss, trying to resist. He squeezed my ass and lifted me up. I had no choice but to wrap my legs around his middle. "Damn, baby," he murmurred. "You are so sexy when you kick ass in the mornin' and take names in the evenin'."


	13. Chapter 13

_Disclaimer- I still don't own Castle, Andrew Marlowe does, and I don't want him to sue me for playing in his sandbox._

* * *

In May, I finished the semester and my family and I celebrated over dinner at the Loft. It kind of irritated me that my book should have been released by now, but Ellington's book was being released as a movie across America with an NC-17 rating. She was so proud and showed up to the premiere much, much thinner. I suspected liposuction. Worst of all, the story was she was carrying on with Sept Lindo, the creep. He showed up to walk the red carpet at the premiere and the paparazzi released a few pictures out back behind the premiere where Ellington and Sept were supposedly making out. It looked pretty staged to me. Ellington ran around saying, "no comment!" whenever the paps were near.

I gave my followers on the Candace Witherspoon account the news that my own erotica novel was being released in July and had a cover reveal. The entire fight with Ellington had gotten me followed by almost all the major names in publishing and in addition to that, around 5,000 followers. I had gotten the cover art and kept it underwraps until the official release date (except for showing it to Ben). To see the image on the cover, however salacious it was, made the project seem real to me, finally. I was going to have a book that had come out of my own head about this time last year on the shelves in stores.

But I couldn't tell anybody about it.

Grams came by very, very late the night I finished finals once she was done with the show to congratulate me. I was now officially a senior at Columbia, with a 3.89 GPA (damn that accounting class for giving me a B!) I had to figure out how to get into a good graduate program in the next year, although my interest in my major was waning. Or, I could just continue writing and take a few years off to do that before graduate school. But I'd have to give Dad an explanation of how I was making enough money to survive. I couldn't see him agreeing to pay for my apartment if I wasn't in school. My shopping habit would have to become nil if I did that, and I treasured my BCBG Max Azria dresses I had bought myself on my birthday.

At my apartment, I turned on my lights and checked my computer, which I had left at home. I wanted to work on the sequel. I couldn't be trusted to work on it around Dad's house. The first edit on the sequel was almost done, and I needed to send the last few chapters to Karé, once I completed my work. I changed into a pair of boxer shorts and a tank top with no bra on, and opened the windows to let some cool, late-spring air in. I twisted my hair into a knot on my head and took off my make-up to sit down and work.

My eyes were blurring by three am, and I finally got to the last page.

Finally, finally, I got it done, but my Facebook notified me of something;

_Heir of the Lindo family fortune challenged officially._

My eyes strained to re-read it. I opened it up and looked up the case.

Septimus Lindo had an alleged illegitimate brother who was challenging the family's inheritance. This bastard kid was claiming he was owed inheritance from his father and wanted some of Sept's money from his trusts. I personally hoped he got everything coming to him.

I checked my email box to write him a note, but saw Karé's email.

_Re: Broken_

_Alexis,_

_Where the hell is the last two chapters of _Broken_?! You said you'd get it done by tonight, but I'm going to bed right now. If it's not in my inbox by the time I wake up at six, I'm coming to your house to get it. Otherwise, I'll reveal your identity to Harper-Collins!_

_Karé_

Well, crap. I opened up a fresh email and addressed it to her, sending her the last few chapters of_ Broken_, rife with descriptive break-up sex between Colton and Rowena, but my phone rang. It was Jules.

I was shocked, but decided to go ahead and answer it.

"Hello?"

"Hi, Alexis," Jules said, sounding tired.

"Hi. I thought you weren't talking to me." I clicked the 'send' button.

"Alexis… I guess I'm not good at admitting this, and I guess this is overdue but… I saw that Sept Lindo's family isn't as virtuous as they seem."

Was she calling to apologize? She better be. "Surprise. And?" I prompted.

"And I'm sorry. There, I said it. I didn't mean to treat you like shit over that. It just seemed like you were sleeping around a lot and getting high and keeping secrets and… I guess I should have trusted you to be telling the truth. I've really missed you."

It didn't feel as good as I wanted it to. "I've really missed you, too," I admitted. "But it really hurt that you didn't think I was telling the truth."

"Well, you're so busy. And Tara tells me you've got a secret project you won't even tell her about, so what was I supposed to believe?"

"And how long have you known me?"

"Almost seven years," she sighed. "It's totally okay if you're sleeping with girls too, now. I'm fine with it, I swear!"

"I'm not bisexual, Jules." I grumbled.

"Oh, okay. Can we just start fresh?"

I thought about it. It was too much to sort through and hash out all over again. "We both screwed up and said some shitty things," I admitted. "Yeah, let's just wipe the slate clean and be friends again. No more slicing open old wounds, okay?"

"I'm so relieved!" she cried. I could hear tears on the edge of her voice. "I'm fine with that! Oh God, I have so many things to tell you and I've missed you so much-"

"Jules," I yawned. "It's almost three-thirty in the morning. Can we catch up tomorrow when the sun comes up here on the East Coast?"

"Oh," she said, sounding embarrassed. "I forgot, it's only eleven-thirty here."

"I'll talk to you soon."

"Alright."

"I love you."

"I love you, too. Good night."

I snuggled into bed with the windows open to my bedroom.

* * *

I was woken up way too early by the buzzer on my door.

"What the fuck?" I mumbled, rolling out of bed. I clomped flat-footed to the door and pressed the intercom button. "Can I help you?"

"Alexis, it's Karé. You were supposed to send me your draft this morning."

I looked at the clock on the microwave. It was only seven-thirty in the morning. "What are you talking about? Check your email; I sent it to you."

"I've checked my email and my spam. It's not in there. Check again."

I gasped; a thought hit me. I ran to my computer and checked my sent mail. And there I had it;

To: det k beckett at p12 nypd dot gov (A/N- sorry, It was hard to format the email in ) SUBJ: MSS: Broken

What did I do? I thought I was going to wet my pants. Oh shit. She could not read the final chapter of _Broken_ with ass-smacking break-up sex. No, no, no. I got that feeling, you know the one? Right before you get diarrhea? But this was so much worse, I wasn't getting diarrhea, I was getting disowned.

"Alexis, are you still there? I'm burning up out here on the street, and it's not even eight! Where's my draft, damnit?" Karé was saying into the intercom.

I ran back there. "Karé, I just sent the last draft of _Broken_ to my stepmother!" I heaved in a low voice. "Oh my God! Oh my God! I'm going to die! She's going to tell my father and he's going to murder me! Oh God! Holy shit!"

There was nothing but silence on her end as I hyperventilated on the floor on my hands and knees.

"Alexis," Karé said gently. "Alexis, calm down. Can you let me up?"

I reached up and hit the entry button, and then pressed my forehead to the hardwood floor and tried to breathe. Oh God, I was going to die. Seriously fucking die. I had just outed my secret identity as a porn writer to my parents. "Fuck, fuck, fuck," I chanted under my breath.

"Alexis?" Karé asked, opening the door to my apartment. She stuck her head in. "Are you alright?"

"No, I'm gonna puke!" I replied, scrambling to my feet to run to the bathroom and vomited bile. "My stepmother cannot read that and connect it to me! She can't! She can't!" I sobbed.

"Calm down, there's worse things than telling your parents you write sex and make money from it."

"You don't understand!" I cried, running the bathroom faucet to cold. "They're going to kill me. Seriously, kill me!"

"Just send me the draft, and call her. It's going to be just fine. I'm sure your father will understand."

"No, I'm his daughter. I don't think he will be okay with it!"

* * *

Hacking Kate's email was a federal crime, I was certain, just like assaulting a police officer. I tried to call her, but got her voicemail from work and her personal cell. After I brushed my teeth and got dressed, I raced down to the station to see if I could intercept her. Most of the other detectives tried to say hi to me, and a few tried to ask me what was wrong. I ignored them. When I arrived at Kate's desk, she wasn't there. There was no way I could get on her computer without the whole bullpen seeing me.

"Alexis?"

I jumped a mile. Kate came up behind me. I clapped a hand to my heart, I thought I had a heart attack for a moment.

"Hi," I said awkwardly.

She didn't smile, but was deceptively calm. I couldn't read her. "I wasn't expecting you. I got a call really early this morning about a homicide in the Meat-Packing District. Is there something you want to tell me?"

"Um…" I wasn't sure what to say. I couldn't lie; she knew all too well when people did.

"Do you want to go somewhere private and tell me something? Like about a certain email you sent me this morning to my work address?"

I was going to die, die a painful and embarrassing death…

"This way," Kate said, indicating the lounge.

I followed her in and she shut the door.

"I got a very salacious attachment in my email this morning," Kate said, sitting down beside me. "It was from your email account, addressed to Karé Baxter. Is this where all this extra income has been coming from, Alexis? You're writing professionally?" She seemed a little bit relieved when she asked me.

"Yes, actually."

"Why didn't you tell us?"

"Dad's going to kill me. He cannot know I write love scenes."

"He doesn't. Not yet."

"It's part of the plot with his books. I'm just writing sex for the readers."

"Wait, you have readers?"

"Well… yes. I'm getting published in a few days. My book's going to be released?"

"Is this part of it?"

"No, this is the sequel."

Her eyebrows almost shot off her forehead, she raised them so high. "Oh."

"Is he going to kill me?"

"No," she rolled her eyes. "Because I'm not telling him."

"Why not?"

"He'll flip out if it comes from me, and then get angry at you. You need to tell him yourself. I'm staying the hell out of this."

"I can't do it."

"Yes, you can. You moved out of his house and in with your boyfriend last year, he knows you're not a virgin anymore. But Christ, have you really had sex in those positions? Some of them I've never even heard of!"

"No," I blushed. "A lot of it, I make up. Or get from it taking notes from porn."

Kate burst out laughing. "As long as you don't write about bondage, I think you'll be okay."

"So you'll keep my secret for me?"

"As long as you don't send any more erotica to my government-issued email anymore. Internal affairs will crucify me if they ever find that in my inbox."

* * *

I felt a huge surge of relief. I knew Kate would distract Dad from here on out if the subject of my income ever came up again. Kate had to tell internal affairs that my email had been corrupted and that she might have gotten a virus from me, and they took her work computer to clean up. I called Jules at a Starbucks and we talked for about an hour until her phone died. It felt good to hear from her. I couldn't tell her everything, but I started getting text messages from Nina, who had heard the same things, and wanted to apologize. She wanted to come up from Princeton and hang out. The relief was palpable.

I went to the Hamptons with my friends the next weekend, where we basically went to the bars we had previously been too young to go into, and hooked up. I met a guy named Michael who was from California and working an internship for a law office this summer. He was a UCLA student. He and I hung out several times that weekend, madeout on the couch in my living room in the Hamptons. Then, he asked me if I wanted to have sex.

I thought about it. "Actually, Mike? No," I admitted. "Can we just wait? Take it slow?"

"Sure," he said.

I had called him several times the next day and he never answered. I saw him with another girl at the pool hall, his hand on her waist, talking almost nose-to-nose with her and I got it; he just wanted sex. He called me the next night, and I told him I didn't think it was going to work out and spent the night in a cold bed.

The truth was, I was dreaming about Ben, not him.

I drove back to New York the next morning and called Ben on the LIE.

"Can you be there when I get home?" I asked.

"Sure. When are you going to be there?"

"Three o'clock. You still have the key?"

"I do."

When I got home, he was there. I told him that I had hung out with a guy a couple of times, but no sex. He helped me get my suitcase into the apartment, and asked me about him.

"He wasn't that interesting," I admitted. I wasn't going to tell him that he was hooking up with girls left and right.

"You missed me?"

"Sure did."

My legs wrapped around his middle, he lifted me up off the floor, I was kissing him. I was so relieved he was there with me. I cared so much about him, I hadn't been able to sleep with anyone else, even though I had permission to. I loved him. He had been there for me and kept my secret. He was a good guy.

"Stop," he whispered.

"What?" I asked. "You don't want to?"

"Not right now, darlin'," he said, stroking my hair. "I'm sorta… stuff's going on."

I wanted to tell the world that I was in love with Ben Haversham. I was ready to. "Do you want to come to the Hamptons with me for a weekend?" I asked. He was so busy teaching a writing seminar for his MFA requirements, I felt like I owed him a nice weekend alone where I could take care of him. "Just us? We can stay at my dad's house all alone. We can pretend we're married and have a naked Sunday-"

"Allie," he cut me off.

"What?"

"We agreed that we were friends with benefits, didn't we?" He sighed and pushed me gently back from him. "We agreed no PDA until we were going to the bedroom to have sex, didn't we?"

"We're breaking that right now."

He sighed again, pinching the bridge of his nose. "I don't want you to ever feel like you can't see other men because of me."

"Maybe… I'm okay with that?" I suggested.

"Allie… Ashlyn and I have been seeing each other for eight months. She really wants a serious commitment. She wants to see me exclusively."

It was like a mic drop. "Are you telling me that you can't see me anymore?"

"She wants me off the market, yeah."

It was like getting punched.

"God, I knew you wouldn't take this well," he muttered. "I can see it in your face. Alexis, you deserve a lot better than me."

Oh God, here it came;_ it's not you, it's me_ and _we can still be friends_. I felt sick.

"If you're going to tell me we can still be friends, I'm going to punch you. Basically, she's better than me, so you're choosing her."

"No, Allie, don't talk like that."

I had been broken up with before, but this didn't even count as a break up, did it? It was like getting your feelings stomped on while you had a crush on a boy who'd never return your feelings. I had been through a few of those never-going-to-happen crushes in prep school and the moment it finally struck you that you just were never going to be good enough for him. It was also the moment you wanted to die and felt worthless, like you had entered a beauty pageant and the other girl was so beautiful there was no way you could win. I felt like I couldn't breathe. "Ben, can you just go?" I said finally. "I don't think I can talk to you right now."

He leaned in to kiss me on the cheek, and while I felt so pathetic and needy, he did it.

He left after that.

I was unsure what to think or do. I couldn't describe this feeling. I had never been through it before. Getting dumped was one thing, but he was being so nice about it. He didn't even take advantage and have break-up sex with me before dropping this bomb. And I had entered this relationship agreeing that we'd never be anything more than friends with the exception of what we did in the bedroom. We were just friends, right? The sex was just so we could have sex, not because we felt anything for each other. But I had allowed myself to feel something for him. I had foolishly believed deep down that we'd transition over to being a couple, somehow. I was so stupid.

I sat down in the breakfast nook and cried.


	14. Chapter 14

_Disclaimer- I still don't own Castle, Andrew Marlowe does, and I don't want him to sue me for playing in his sandbox. I'm just having fun, I make no moneys._

* * *

After he left I got drunk and went to bed for a day. I just wanted a day to feel bad and feel sorry for myself and then rejoin the normal world. Maybe letting myself hurt so badly and opening the flood gates of pain would help me heal faster. I got a call from Dad that he wanted his car back. I needed a break from this almost break-up that felt like a real one and I asked if I could come over and hang out; most of my friends were out of town and I just wanted to chill out and pretend this friends-with-benefits thing had never happened.

I drove Dad's car to the parking garage under the building and parked it back in his space before taking the elevator up.

He was making Chicken Souvlaki and Tzatziki. He rarely made Greek food, but it was the best at dinnertime. It was best at the Hampton's House, but that was because he had a grill out there.

Jo-jo was getting bigger and was crawling, now. She was hard to keep up with and we constantly had to watch her, lest she pick something up and shove it in her mouth.

"We have to keep our eye on her twenty-four seven," Kate said, picking her up. She pouted and squirmed, so Kate put her down. "She's getting tired, I can tell."

I knelt down on the floor and played with Jo-jo for a bit.

"You seem kind of sad," Kate noted.

"I'm fine," I muttered. Jo-jo crawled over to me and started climbing my stubbly legs. I picked her up and sat her down beside me on the couch. "Wanna watch some TV?" I asked her. She grinned, so I turned on the set.

* * *

After dinner, I stayed the night at the Loft in Gram's old room. Jo-jo woke me up, so I went and got her before Kate and Dad woke up. After a diaper change, I noticed it was four-thirty in the morning, so I took her downstairs for a bottle of breast milk and tried to keep the noise down. I heated the frozen packet of stored breast milk in warm water and put Jo in the baby swing, turning it on. She was cranky and hungry. The milk couldn't warm up fast enough.

After feeding her warmed up milk, she napped a little so I could make some coffee. I had left some of my gym clothes in the dryer last night, so I went to get them out and put in the last of my laundry in the dryer. I sat down at my computer and opened up my Instagram. Ben used that for social media more than his Twitter. I hadn't been able to bring myself to stop following him on either one yet. His Instagram mostly was of buildings around New York and some of the stories he had heard about from the people in the buildings and occasionally a selfie before teaching a class. Nothing out of the ordinary. I checked his Twitter, it was the same.

I got up my Scrivener file for the third and final book in the Trilogy. The idea was to get Colton and Rowena together again, but I didn't feel like writing a happy ending right now. I made some notes and outlined a bit. _The worst thing when you have writer's block is to have a blank page,_ Kathy told me over IM. _You can always edit something unless the page is blank._ Even Kathy didn't know who I really was (or so I assumed). She was quickly becoming one of my best friends in the industry, though.

I checked my text messages, and there was one from Ben.

_I'm a bit worried about you. You are ok?_

I deleted his text. I didn't want to talk to him or be friends with him.

Dad entered the room in his bathrobe, looking all groggy and unshaven around six.

"Oh, sweetheart, you took care of Jo-jo? Kate and I woke up around five and thought she had slept through the night. We were so excited."

"Sorry to burst all your hopes and dreams," I said, closing out Scrivener so he didn't see.

"We're going to have the baby-sitter come in at eight or so. Do you need any help with the rest of your laundry?"

I shook my head. "I'm almost done. Thanks for letting me bring it over."

He went and got a cup of coffee, and after a moment, he turned back to me. "Are you alright?"

I shrugged. "I'm okay."

"Is something making you sad?"

I shrugged again. "Just stuff. I'll be alright."

"If you say so. You know you can always talk to me."

"Thank you."

I helped getting breakfast ready while they got up and ready for work. When the baby-sitter arrived, I went back to my apartment with my laundry, feeling dejected and lonely. I didn't want to be in my apartment any longer. It reminded me too much of the time I spent with Ben, even my laundry did.

I decided I was going to do some redecorating again. I swore I was getting hives from this place. Redecorating became a lot easier when I started sifting through paint color ideas online and found some good ideas. I had the drop cloths and brushes from earlier in February, and I went out and bought some more paint at the hardware store. Maybe I went a little too bold with the colors, but I realized how hideous it looked in my living room when I was halfway done. Orangy-red was not a great idea and I'd need several coats of primer to cover this monstronsity of a color up. I was just going to pretend it wasn't even there.

I talked to Allison, whose internship in Philly was going great, and she told me how much she missed New York, but she couldn't come home, the internship was that demanding. My friends were mostly hanging out in the Hamptons this summer, and I didn't want to go there because Michael was there right now. Lame, but I just couldn't sleep around or even think about romance. My self-esteem was shot.

I avoided my living room for the next few days. New York was becoming very lonely. Most everybody was out doing something. I was staying home and writing by myself. I ended up camping out in the Starbucks with my Macbook, like I was in some kind of cult. Ben texted me a few more times over the next few days, to which I responded,_ I really don't want to talk to you right now. Maybe ever. Stop bothering me. I still don't know how to feel._

My summer was getting really lame. I wanted to interact with people and to stop feeling so sad. At the same time, I didn't want to be me anymore.

I got a call one evening from Kate to see if I wanted to come over and baby-sit Jo-jo while they went out to dinner. They needed a break and Dad had just met a deadline. I volunteered immediately.

The night went off without a hitch once Kate and Dad were gone. Jo-jo and I played with her toys and watched _Baby Einstein_, and I fed her some pureed sweet potatoes and squash, which she enjoyed. Bathtime went smoothly, too. When I laid her down, she cried a little bit, but went to sleep within fifteen minutes.

I raided the fridge to see if there was anything good to eat and watched Dad's recorded Game of Thrones on the DVR, only to get weirded out when the obligatory nude scene happened. I flipped it off and read a book instead. Nudity reminded me too much having sex with Ben.

The door handle twisted and Dad and Kate walked in with boxes of food.

"Hi, honey," Dad said in quiet voice. "How did tonight go?"

"She ate pureed sweet potatoes and squash and had a bath before bedtime," I said. "She's asleep, now."

"Thanks."

"You know we always call you first in case you want to baby-sit for her," Kate added. "We noticed you're not being yourself lately and we're kind of worried."

"What's 'myself'?"

"Well, you know. Funny, talkative, outgoing. You seem to be retreating into yourself a lot this summer," Dad noted. "Why aren't you going to the Hamptons with your friends? Going to concerts and bars like you used to? Do you want to go to the movies, just you and me, sometime? Or maybe go to see Gram's play? Or to dinner, just us?"

I realized Dad wanted to know so badly what was going on with me and why I wasn't opening up. I realized how detrimental it had been to keep things from him, that he was a little scared. I burst into tears, suddenly. My father didn't know me anymore, and he had once been the one person I trusted the most in this world. The two big things in my life; the sexual side of my relationship with Ben and the book I was writing, that I had to keep secret. I couldn't describe the guilt and anxiety welling up within me and didn't know how to. I was trapped. I was in a prison of my own making.

Dad slipped an arm around me and Kate knelt down in front of me on the couch, taking my hands off my knees and holding them. I cried for a few minutes. I felt like I didn't deserved either of them being so kind to me right now. Even Kate didn't know everything.

"What if it was just you and me?" Kate asked. "And maybe the baby? This is the perfect time in the summer to go fishing at my dad's cabin in Vermont. Maybe for a girl's weekend?"

The idea of leaving New York and not having to face potential boyfriends or my friends and just be? I trusted Kate to not tell Dad about my secret career. I decided I'd tell her about the whole thing with Ben this weekend, too. I nodded. "Yeah. We can do that."

"Alright, get packed for the weekend and I'll pick you up after work on Friday, okay? Go home and get a good night's rest."

"Okay."

They said good-night to me and I packed up my computer and purse and took the subway back to my half-finished apartment. I had to pee when I got home, and when I did, I found that I had started my period. Awesome. Just in time for a girl's weekend. My life was super.

* * *

The next day, I had packed some summer camping stuff between doses of Midol and sitting around fiddling with the third book outline on the couch with a heating pad on my stomach. It was kind of embarrassing that this was the reason I had been so emotional last night. Kate showed up with the baby to pick me up at five-thirty wearing a pair of cut off shorts and a plaid work shirt she had tied at the waist.

"I'm going to apologize for crying like a little kid last night," I said, picking up my dufflebag and opening the door. "I'm also going to apologize for all the rest stops we're going to have to do tonight on the drive; I started my period last night when I got home."

Kate smirked. "I know that feeling. You're not alone."

"I'm so glad."

"What did you do to this place?" she asked, stepping inside to see the garish color halfway done on the walls.

"I felt the need to change it up because I'm getting cabin fever."

"I looks like barf on the walls."

"I know. I'll fix it. Eventually."

I locked the door behind me and we went downstairs to where her car was parked. I packed my dufflebag in the trunk and she put Jo-jo in her carseat. We took off to the interstate to head North and leave New York behind us. It just felt better just getting out of there. Even a city girl like me needed a break from it all.

I made sure Kate's iPod hooked up to the stereo and started scrolling through her artist list.

"Pick whatever you want," she said.

"Is this the original _Piano Man_?" I asked.

"Yes, indeed," she said. "Your father and I love that song. I loved that song when I was a kid, too."

I played it. "Because of a memory?"

"It was this one and _Tiny Dancer,_" Kate began. "My Mom and I loved those songs. She loved music. She used to tell me they made her think of me."

I scrolled through the list. "I don't recognize half these people."

"Like who?"

"Like Raefella Carra. Who is she?"

"Bow down to Raefella Carra, you freakin' heathen!" Kate teased. "She's like Madonna, Lady Gaga, and Donna Summer all rolled into one in Italy. My Mom had her records from when she spent a summer in Europe as an au pair in the 70s, before I was born. I downloaded those songs illegally, shh, but I still have the records at your Dad's house."

"Can we listen to it, next?"

"We can listen to it right now if you want. You're the DJ." I changed the song over to _Rumores_, and an irrepressible disco beat flooded the car stereo.

"Oh my God, this is awesome," I admitted.

"The video is a psychedelic acid trip. And pink bell-bottomed pantsuits, it's fantastic."

I checked back behind myself on Jo-jo, and she was asleep.

"Is part of what's going on have to do with writing erotica? All this guilt and repression making you depressed and anxious? Your book isn't even out, yet. Your father will understand if you just come clean."

"I don't want to come clean," I said glumly.

"How… bad is the sex in this book?" she asked, unsure.

"It's not so bad. It's not bondage and whips and chains and threesomes and golden showers. But it's there. In detail. And it's not just the missionary."

"What would it look like for you to be able to tell him?"

"First off, I don't want him getting angry at me. Or imagine me doing these things. I haven't done them all. And I take writing very seriously with my research."

"The rule of thirty-four?"

"What's that?"

Kate chuckled. "The rule of 34 is that if there's something to be sexually aroused by, it's on the internet in the form of pornography."

"Ew!" I didn't want to admit that I had watched some porn for ideas. Yeah, ideas.

"Why did you write it?" she asked as we slowed down at the toll station.

"I wanted to get my foot in the door in the publishing industry. Without Dad's help. It's been a dream of mine to be a writer who can stand on her own two feet without people going, '_you wouldn't have gotten published if you weren't Richard Castle's kid_' and '_I bet you hired a ghostwriter and slapped your name on it to ride on the Castle brand_.' I wanted to get published on my own. I want to make a name for myself because I'm good enough, not because I was born lucky."

"I understand all too well."

"How so?"

"Do you have any idea how difficult it is to advance and do well in police work without falling back on being a woman? There's so much mocking. And disrespect. And so many people wanting to see you fail, and go harder on you than any other man they go up against. I've had to work twice as hard as any man, do twice as much work, pull twice my weight, to even get the respect the average man on the force does. That's why I didn't take Castle's last name when we got married; mine meant something. I worked hard for that respect. My name means a lot to me." She paid the toll booth operator and we drove forward. "I had to be really secure in who I was deep down before I got into this and create a really thick skin. People aren't going to automatically love you unless you're true to yourself. They'll want to see you fail. And there will be moments you can't always catch the killer, but you can never give up. I'm listening to you and feel like you're losing part of who and what you want to be. You're giving up your name."

I shrugged. "It's so hard living a double life, though."

"I know."

I changed the song to Rex Manning's _Say No More Mon Amour._ "_Oh Rexy, you're sooo sexy!_"

Kate smirked.

"This is awful," I stated. "Corny. Terrible."

"I know. It's from the movie _Empire Records_. I love this movie so much in high school, I searched far and wide to find combat boots, a plaid skirt, and cropped sweater like Liv Tyler's my junior year. The rest of the soundtrack is the best. It really is."

She was being so honest with me and letting me in so much, it just struck me to be honest about something else. "Kate? I was seeing somebody."

"Aaaaand it all comes out."

"You knew?"

"Your birthday. I suspected. You _were_ sleeping with Ben, weren't you?"

"Can I tell you the whole thing and you promise not to tell it all to Dad?"

"I think I've kept enough secrets for you."

"It's not exactly what Dad would want to hear out of me," I admitted.

"What?"

"It wasn't a typical relationship. I loved him, but Ben and I were just friends."

"Friends or friends with benefits?"

"With benefits," I reluctantly admitted.

"Your generation thinks they invented that. They didn't, I promise."

"You had friends with benefits?"

"Honey, I had a lot of guy friends I slept with. And it taught me that men and women can't have 'benefits' when feelings get in the way and complicating things. Let me guess, that's what happened?"

"Yes. I kept on telling him, 'we're just friends. I don't care what you're doing with your romantic life, it's no big deal.' And then, a few weeks ago, he told me he couldn't sleep with me anymore. This was after I rejected two other guys for him."

Kate sighed and shook her head. "So you lied to him about how you felt?"

I shrugged. "I guess."

"Yes or no?"

"Yes, I lied to him. I wanted to hear it from him, first. But... I told him my number."

"Your number? You mean…"

"Yes."

She gasped. "What? Why?"

"I just thought that's what couples do when they get close enough."

"I never told the guys I dated how many men I had slept with. Why would you do that?"

"It was my birthday. Remember how we had to cancel dinner because my friends weren't going to show up and Jo-jo had those ear infections?"

"Oh…"

"Yeah, I came home in tears and feeling so upset and down on myself and Ben was there-"

"Did you tell him you wanted to be more than friends? Ever?"

"Isn't that relationships are?" I asked. "You're friends and partners, deep down? I was hoping he'd guess."

She sighed. "I'd like to think that. That's how your father and I started out; he was my partner. I trusted him with my life and my career, but never my heart. Giving someone all your vulnerabilities, trusting them with that, that so much different than just having sex with him. It's getting your feelings involved. There's trusting someone to be there, to save that part of their life just for that person. This is where casual sex and friends with benefits, all that kind of messes things up and makes lines blurry."

"Everything's clear in hindsight."

"I know. But it's not too much for you to tell him you want monogamy and you want him all to yourself. You deserve to ask for that."

I had thought all this time that not making demands on Ben for monogamy and being his everything made the whole situation easier for both of us, it would make him want me more. "I was waiting on him to step up and tell me he wanted to be with me."

"Did you tell him that?"

"No," I admitted sheepishly.

"See? This is where I feel like so much self-disrespect is going on these days. Men aren't psychics. Why would we expect them to be? Why did you expect him to know how you felt?"

"Geez, make me feel worse," I grumbled.

"I'm not trying to, I swear. You used to impress me with how direct you were with your boyfriends. What happened?"

"I don't know," I muttered. "I felt like I was driving them away by demanding things in our relationships. And with Ben, I kept on thinking about how we needed to keep each other at a distance because he edited my book-"

"Wait a second," Kate said. "He edited your book?"

"Is that another capital offense in relationships?" I snorted.

"No, I'm surprised you didn't get somebody else to do it for you."

"I hired him to edit for me last summer around the time I met him at Elton John's clambake. There was nobody else that knew I finished that book."

"Oh, are you kidding?" she asked. "All I remember from that party was Ellington Taylor making really snide comments about me at that party before her drunk ass fell into the pool."

"Big surprise," I muttered. "She's a hot mess."

"Hot mess. Best term I ever heard to describe her."

We stopped a few times for a tampon change and a few times at toll booths. There was a grocery stop and then we arrived at the cabin in the dark, at about nine-thirty in the evening.

It was a quaint but rustic little cabin that looked like Jim Beckett. We managed to set up Jo-jo's travel crib one in Kate's bedroom and set her down in or the night. Once we had all our stuff inside and the groceries unloaded, I went to check my Twitter feed only to realize my phone didn't have any internet service.

"There's no internet!" I cried.

"I know, isn't it great?" Kate asked, with a sneaky grin on her face as she was making a breakfast strata.

"You tricked me!"

"Don't worry, you can still text. And maybe you'll get some calls, but just enjoy a weekend without technology. Oh, can you let your dad know we made it here, safe and sound?"

"Sure," I said, closing out my Twitter app.

I followed Kate outside as she told me about the first time Dad faked her out about being able to shoot well. We watched the stars and drank a few beers while I let out all the worries and concerns about Ben. She listened. It wasn't so bad just hanging out with her. We went to bed around midnight.

When I woke up, Kate knocked on the door. I opened my eyes to the darkness still out and saw her standing there with Jo-jo on her hip. "Come on, breakfast is ready, we're going fishing."

"This early?"

"Yup! This is the best time!"

I got in to my swimsuit, some shorts, a tank top, and hoodie for breakfast. Kate had Jo-jo in a bumbo and was feeding her pre-packed pureed baby food for breakfast.

"Help yourself to the strata," Kate said. "I got some bait at the tackle shop."

"What kind of bait is it?" I asked.

"The real kind."

"Which is?"

"You don't know?"

I scooped out some strata and started eating. "No. I've never been fishing."

"You're in for a surprise. I'll let you eat, first."

After breakfast, Kate took Jo-jo and me to the dock, and the first rays of sunlight were just coming up over the mountains. I carried Jo-jo, and we got into the pontoon boat (that she said her father owned) and she loaded the fishing gear in.

I enjoyed the fresh air, and so did Jo. Kate drove the boat out to the middle of the lake and got out the fishing rods for us, letting me use her father's. She showed me how to use the hook and lure, and the she opened up the bait.

I saw thick, black worms. "Okay, are you ready for this?"

"What?" I cried.

"Come on, we can do anything! I've done this every summer since I was a little girl! I'll show you how-"

"Ew!" I cried. "How do you bait the… Oh!" I gasped. I was supposed to stab the worm with the hook.

"They don't have a nervous system, it doesn't hurt them," Kate offered, picking up a worm.

"Ew ew ew!" I whined. Jo-jo looked as me as if I had lost my mind.

"Be quiet! You'll scare the fish away!"

"I don't think I even have a license to fish," I said, trying to stall.

"Chill out, I already got you one. Just try it out. Don't freak, it's not that hard!" She hooked the worm through the smooth part, not the ribbing. I felt sick.

"That looks like it hurts!"

"It doesn't, I swear! Just try it."

I shivered and stuck my hand into the bait tub and picked out a worm.

"I could have gotten live crickets," she sang.

I shivered and closed my eyes.

"You've got to look at it to hook it."

"Okay…" I said, opening my eye. I stabbed the poor worm with the point of the hook and gasped.

"Calm down. If you cut worms in half, they regenerate and survive just fine," she said.

"I know, but…"

"This is the circle of life," Kate said. "The fish eats worm, we eat the fish, and when we die and get buried into the earth, the worms eat us."

"Ugh…" I muttered. "Now what?"

"I'm going to cast the line. Watch."

She whipped the rod around and let go of the reel and the end of the hook landed several feet away. I tried to do what she did, and failed miserably. It took me several tries, but I finally got my hook far out in the water.

"What do we do, now?"

"Wait."

"And?"

"And that's it. We can talk about stuff. Quietly."

"Like penises?"

"Is that all you twenty-somethings think about?"

"It was a joke."

"Ha ha."

We sat on the bottom of the pontoon boat and waited while keeping the tackle box and the bait away from Jo-jo's reach. Jo-jo fell asleep and I almost fell back asleep when I felt something tugging on my line.

"Do you think I got something?" I asked.

"I think so," Kate said, sitting up, I started reeling in my catch and then I saw what it actually was; a water-logged boot.

"Well, that was a waste!"

"I'm tossing it back," she said, unhooking it. My worm had been eaten off the hook, so I had to re-bait my hook and then Kate got something on her line. I helped her pull it in, and she said it was trout, but once I took a picture of it flipping around in her hands (she was making a face), she asked me if I wanted to eat what we caught.

"Do we do that? Not toss it back?"

"I grew up eating the fish I caught."

"Isn't this lake polluted?"

"No, not really."

"Okay, let's do it!" I cried.

"I'll teach you how to gut a fish when we get back to the cabin!"

"Oh wow. Can't wait," I replied in a monotone.

"Smartass."

* * *

I realized once we were done that fishing wasn't so gross when I thought about it. Kate took a picture of me on her phone holding the two little fish I had caught when we got to the dock. Catching and gutting fish wasn't any grosser than the work I did the ME office when I was interning my senior year of Prep school. And Kate and I got to talk about just random things, but the subject kept on coming back to the men we dated and relationships through the day. She didn't judge me, which was nice. We spent the afternoon on the beach with Jo-jo and introduced her to the lake water, taking off her diaper and sticking her little feet in.

A few people in the area knew Kate; they were older and knew her as 'Katie Beckett.' After a grilled dinner of a freshly caught fish (it was actually one of the best fresh water fish I had ever had), we sat on the porch drinking beers and taking turns rocking Jo-jo to sleep. We watched the stars with a citronella candle burning between our deck chairs. Without all the ambient lighting of the city, I could really see the stars, and the were so beautiful.

I hadn't expected this weekend to be so fun. I thought it was just going to be a weekend for me to cry and feel sorry for myself and Kate waiting for me to get my shit together. But it was turning out to be so much more than that."

"Sometimes, the city gets into your bones," Kate noted. "I think we're definitely city girls, but we all need a change in scenery once-in-a-while."

"I think so, too," I admitted. "This is pretty nice. Honestly? I like it better than the Hamptons. Less society pressure, the people seem nicer, less ambient light so you can really see the stars..."

"I think so, too. I used to love coming out here with my parents."

"I guess it was fun when it was the three of you. Really special."

"Dad still comes out here on the weekends," Kate said. "For a while I thought I was too cool for fishing, but after a break, I missed it. And the time I spent with my parents. You never realize how special these times are, you always think they'll be there, and then a few years later, you realize they've all but vanished. And that's when you try to make new memories and special weekends with the people you love, and it's all okay."

"You know, I'd like the Hamptons more if we weren't so busy playing games. Like, who I've flirted with, does he have money, who's had sex with whom, is that stepping on my girlfriend's toes? If it was more like this..."

"Yeah, I find that annoying too. It just seems to come with money. More money, more problems. I personally thing rich people invent problems for themselves. But I do like the beach a little more than the lake."

"We've got that here," I noted.

"Yes, we do," she said, rocking back with Jo-jo asleep on her chest. "Your father likes how simple it is, too. He says this is the best place to go when he needs to disconnect and just write without distractions."

I rocked and listened to the crickets, pulling my zip-up hoodie more tightly around myself against the slight chill in the air. Dad liked this place to write. I liked it, too, and had thought about coming out here when I had writer's block. There was too much going on in the Hamptons, especially in the summer.

"I was thinking the same thing. But… Dad will get suspicious. You really, really have not told him about my book?"

"No, I haven't. That needs to come from you. Not me."

"I don't know how I'll do that. This book has blown up in my face. I never expected to have five-thousand Twitter followers before the book actually came out. I was just planning on writing something so small that it wouldn't even register on his radar."

"Don't be ashamed of it," Kate said. "I don't know why you are."

"Because it's about sex."

"Is it really just about sex? Or a relationship? I have the feeling you don't know the first thing about a successful friends with benefits relationship if you let your feelings get involved with Ben. You were looking for a relationship there, and sex without feelings can be so painfully boring after a while."

"There were a lot of feelings involved," I admitted. "One night, we agreed to just say 'I love you' if the mood hit us, but agreed it didn't mean anything."

She moaned in discontent. "Bad idea. You didn't write that into your story, did you?"

I thought about it. "There is a larger story arc," I admitted. "My main character got her feelings involved with the hero and I've broken them up in my second book. Sorry, spoilers."

"I will be the first to get my copy, but I will never read it, okay? How far are you in the second book?"

"Oh, I finished it, it's with my editor right now. The one at Harper-Collins, not Ben."

"Oh. Are you going to do a trilogy?"

"Yes."

We rocked back and forth and listened to something weird above the crickets; Kate said it was a frog ribbeting. I had never heard that before in my life. It sounded so weird!

"I need to admit something," Kate began. "I googled your penname."

"What?" I cried. "Why?"

"That whole fight with Ellington Taylor over Twitter. It was epic! I know that's childish, but she was being an asshole when she interrupted that writer's panel. She did threaten you when you called her out, I saw it on her Twitter, like an idiot. I'm so proud of you!"

I laughed. "I was terrified!"

"Your father would be proud of you. And not just because it was Ellington. Your father has a sense of morality, despite all the dumb things he's done."

"Like?"

"Like hopping on a police horse drunk and naked."

"That was ten years ago!" I laughed. "And even though I'm as embarrassed as fuck about that still, it didn't hurt anybody. People still clap him on the back and chuckle over it."

"The sex in your book doesn't hurt anybody. It's just a book. You can tell your father about it. If he gets upset with you, just bring that up. How is it any different from the purple-prose romance novels he wrote under a penname when you were a little kid to bring in some extra cash?"

I shrugged. "Good point. When did you get this wise, Kate?"

"Through my mother."

"I wish I had known her."

"She'd have liked you. And she'd be telling you the same things I'm telling you. She taught me about double-standards growing up by setting an example for me."

"Like what?" What hadn't I been taught because I didn't have a female role model directly in my childhood until I was fourteen?

"Like… I couldn't have a career unless I gave up having a family. And that I couldn't possibly know about sex and pleasing a man unless I was a dangerous slut and an object for men to use. That's crap. And a double-standard. Women still have to fight for equal rights."

"Women have the right to vote," I noted.

"Big deal. I know women who say they only vote for the cutest candidate, not the one that is about the things they need politically. So many men subscribe to that idea, too, it's pathetic. I watched my mother work a job and parent me- and she did it well. She was such an example and didn't let people tell me my feelings were wrong from an early age. She called my Dad out continually when he did things like that to her. She didn't let him get away with it. It was her relationship with him that taught me how to handle relationships. I never let a man steamroll me and make me believe I was being stupid."

"Pi used to tell me I was overly emotional and the things I got upset about were trivial."

"That's crap. Our feelings and needs don't count? I call shenanigans on that- on behalf of every woman. I didn't particularly like Pi, but your father thought he was filling your head with explosively stupid connotations. But you had to make the mistake of dating him and moving in with him. I didn't think he was good for you, but sometimes, we have to make those mistakes to learn better. We come out better women- better _people_ for it."

"He was a dick. For all his hippie ways, he was a jerk to me, now that I think about it. I felt stuck towards the end. But, it's okay for him to live with his girlfriends, just like it was for Dad. But not for me. Men can do all sorts of things and get away with it that women can't."

"Why is it okay for your father to experiment in public drunken nudity and have an endless list of women he's dated and slept with? But you can't know anything about sex without being labeled something negative, like a slut, for writing about it?"

"I dont know. Gender roles."

"Exactly right. Give that double-standard the finger. Don't be ashamed to come out with your true identity after the book's become a success. You worked hard on it and I know your father will stand behind you if you do."


	15. Chapter 15

_Disclaimer- I still don't own Castle, Andrew Marlowe does, and I don't want him to sue me for playing in his sandbox. I couldn't resist the_ Firefly _reference. Sorry, I stole it from Joss Whedon! Credit where credit is due!_

* * *

I came back from Vermont with Kate refreshed and ready to take on life again. I was so happy I had gotten to know her and confronted my baggage from my relationship with Pi that had messed up things with Ben. When I arrived back in the city, Ben had gotten the message to leave me alone. He didn't try to see me or talk to me at all.

When Kate and I arrived back at the Loft on Sunday, I helped her with unloading all the baby stuff back in the apartment. Dad met us when we came in.

"We've brought back some fish!" Kate sang out. "Just caught this morning before we left!"

"It was so fun!" I admitted. "Fishing wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be!"

"She even touched live bait," Kate added.

"I'm glad you're feeling better," Dad said. "You'll never guess what was delivered this weekend!"

"What?" Kate asked.

Dad went to his office and came back with a stack of books. "ARCs!"

"Nice," I said, but when he set the books down, they slid across the counter and I saw something I had never expected.

My book: the scantily-clad, near-make-out posed cover models, the man without his shirt on, the woman with her cleavage on display, their lips almost touching... I felt that detrimental nausea I was getting too familiar with.

"I leafed through a couple of them, but this one!" Dad picked up my book. "This one was all kinds of- what is it you say, Beckett? Awesomesauce? Eek Taylor's going to be pissed when she sees this one out!"

I saw Kate's jaw drop. He flipped through the book and opened up a passage and began reading aloud in his best pseudo-dramatic reading voice.

_"I saw Colton's chiseled chest heave with rage. 'Dont you ever, ever, ever chase her down! I don't care if you have a camera-' 'Colton,' I begged as the rain soaked into my hair, "it's fine, that's the paparazzi's job, they do that-'"_

"Castle!" Kate shouted. "Do you have to read this book of all books in the world in front of your own daughter?" I could see the anxiousness in her own expression. "It's obviously a bodice-ripper."

"What? It's not a scene with any sex in it!"

"Dad, that's just gross," I choked out. "I'm leaving if you're going to read erotica aloud to me! Bye!"

"I'm not, I swear!" Dad cried. "It's just purple prose and it's funny! I thought you'd find it funny, too because porn writers can't truly be trusted to write well."

I felt dizzy. "I don't find it funny," I finally said. "Don't read it."

"Okay, I'm sorry. But they want a blurb out of me for some reason."

_What in the ever-living Sam Hell?_ I thought. _Why would my publisher send an ARC to my dad of all people when he never published erotica under his name? Didn't Karé put a hold on that? Why ask him for a blurb?_

"Have you read it?" Kate asked, trying to hide her alarm.

"Not all of it, no. But it's so laughably corny, it's hilarious!"

"Just stop traumatizing your daughter and put it down," she instructed as if she were dealing with a hostage situation.

I saw spots in my vision and was breaking out into a cold sweat. It started to sink in; Dad just said that erotica writers couldn't write. He just said that I was a bad writer without even knowing it. I thought I was going to pass out; my father had just given me an honest review of my ability to write and just destroyed me. It hurt so badly I wasn't sure how I'd survive it. He had never told me that I sucked before at anything.

"Alexis?" Dad asked. "Are you okay?"

"No, I'm really not," I admitted. I ran to the powder room by the front door and vomited.

Kate locked herself in there with me while I was hunched over the toilet. "I snatched it up when he wasn't looking," she said, lifting her top and pulling the book out of the waistband of her jeans.

"Burn it," I whispered. "Don't let him have a copy."

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm so sorry. Of all the things that could have happened this weekend..."

Breathing was getting harder for me. I was still sweating. "He just said I wrote badly."

"No, he didn't," she said, kneading my back with her hands. "It's just not his taste in literature. He knows nothing about writing erotica. What he writes, it's from a man's point of view, not a woman's. Don't tell me you've never read those scenes in his books."

"Secretly, I have," I admitted. "And I felt so dirty and guilty afterwards."

She slipped an arm around my shoulders and pulled me back from the bowl. We had shared a package of goldfish crackers on the way home from Vermont in the car, and that was most of what was floating around in the bowl. It smelled terrible. "Curiosity," she muttered, closing the toilet lid. "It's fine to be curious. When you tell him you wrote this book, he won't say that." She flushed the toilet for me. "Come on, let's stand up. You're spending the night."

"No, I'm-"

"Yes, you are, don't argue. Go take a bath in my bathroom and get to bed in your old room. You might as well tell him now."

That night, I chickened out and didn't tell him. When the horror and nerves and cold sweat had worn off around midnight, I got a text from Tara;

_So over the Hamptons. Coming back t2 NYC 2morro. Too much drama. Tell you ab it whn I get home. 3!_

I took the ARC of my book and checked out my bedroom window that looked down into an alley. Nobody was down there, so I pitched the book out and let it land in the dirty puddle.

* * *

Tara came back, burnt out on the Hamptons. As much as she liked the beach, the endless drama had gotten to her. Sept Lindo was still trying to rape girls in the sand dunes on the beach and nobody was speaking up. And the guy Tara had been seeing, a WASP named Harold, took Sept's side when a girl came running out from the dunes screaming that Sept attacked her.

"I couldn't take it. It was just idiotic," she admitted. "He said, '_well, isn't it good common sense not to go off in a dark, isolated place with a guy you just met? If she got attacked, she deserved it!_' And my bullshit meter went off."

I felt sick to my stomach. I hadn't told my friends about last summer when Sept tried to rape me, but I got away. "Sept Lindo is a waste of space," I muttered.

"So true. So what did you end up doing?"

"I went to Vermont with Kate," I said. "She taught me to fish and we just talked and hung out on the beach with Jo-jo. She can be really cool."

"Did you get mistaken for lesbians?"

"No. Most everybody knew her and who I was by default."

We went on a shopping spree and bought some items for our fall wardrobes and then went to a concert for the Black Keys where we met a few guys. I didn't take them too seriously, it was just a bit of making out until one of them suggested we go to see Ellington's book-to-movie monstrosity for the nudity and laughs. It was the worst-reviewed movie of the year so far.

Tara and I had to leave quickly.

The next morning, Karé called me to let me know she had a link for me to release my first two chapters online and to tweet it from Candace's account.

"Why did the publisher send my father an ARC of my book?" I blurted out.

"What?" she asked, horrified.

"My father read part of my book. I shit you not. He thought it was hilarious and was reading some of it to me and my stepmother before I puked and she stole it."

She was silent. "What parts?" she uttered.

"It was the part where Rowena was chased down the street by a paparazzo trying to take pictures of her drunk at a fundraiser and Colton knocked the camera out of his hands."

"Oh. That's not so bad."

"It was bad! He's read the sex I wrote!"

"You've never read his, have you?"

"He never gave it to me to read, I'd steal his books from his bookshelf and read it for myself when I was in junior high. I have never felt so dirty in my whole life!"

"Oh, honey… I'm sorry. I'll put an order in next time to keep Richard Castle off the ARC list. You need to tell him once this book is out."

"He said my writing was bad."

"He did?"

I nodded and remembered I was on the phone. "Yes."

"Alexis, honey… He's not an erotica writer. Keep that in mind."

"I know," I mumbled.

"He writes sex like a man. It's all about breasts and earth-shattering orgasms, when that's not really what sex is like. But, let's get back to business. Post that link to the first chapters on your blog and your Twitter, and let's see if we can drum up some interest. This is the home stretch between now and July: you've got to do promotion as well. Kathy's got some signed copies of her own books and is willing to donate them to you for promotional purposes. She read the ARC and loved it, you know that, right?"

"I know. She's so sweet."

"She told me she gave a blurb."

"Aww! I love her!"

"Write her a note telling her that, okay? And Mildred- I mean, Desi Cherise, she's given a blurb, so did four other authors. They loved your book."

"I will send them hand-written thank-you notes."

"Good. And lastly, I've got something else for you; the second editing letter for _Broken_ is on it's way!"

"Ugh!" I moaned.

"I hope that third book is getting outlined."

"Trust me, it is. I got a lot done at the Lake this weekend."

"Love ya, sweets."

"Love you, too."

* * *

I teased my Twitter followers for a few days, and wrote those thank you notes to Kathy and the others and mailed them. And then, I saw it; Dad had followed Candace Witherspoon on Twitter.

Shit.

After panicking and then realizing he had no idea that it was me, I considered blocking him, but instead sent him a direct message; _You're old enough to be my father_.

He wrote back; _Don't read too much into a follow, hot stuff. I'm married to a wonderful woman & have a baby with her. And, she could kill me with her pinkie finger._

_I'm following you because of your epic take-down of EKT at the NY bookfair. That has endeared you to me somewhat._

_But seriously, you could do a lot better than writing erotica. You actually understand English grammar, unlike your erotica-writing counterparts who shall remain nameless._

I wanted to get him to admit that he thought my book was crap to me as Candace, but I knew he had better manners than that.

_I'll write what I want to write, thank you very much._ I wrote back.

Dad didn't respond.

When I finally did release the first two chapters of my book online, the tweet was favorited and retweeted over ten thousand times in five days and my follower count climbed to almost eight thousand. This was going to be huge. It was going to blow up in my face if I didn't watch my step.

I watched Ellington bitch with blind items (that were about Candace) over Twitter and I wanted to rip her a new one, but she didn't quite give me enough rope to hang her with. I was certain she had gotten her hands on an ARC, and did not have nice thing to say about it. I called Karé, and she told me not to worry about it, just to ignore her, but she'd keep an eye on her.

A few days later, I got the call from Karé: my book had been pre-ordered over a thousand times.

Only I could get upset about being successful. This would not end well, I was certain.


	16. Chapter 16

_Disclaimer- I still don't own Castle, Andrew Marlowe does, and I don't want him to sue me for playing in his sandbox._

* * *

Apparently, Candace's presence was a threat to Ellington. I think part of it was that Sept had dumped her, according to the gossip. And I found out when I discovered an extra five thousand dollars on my bank statement on August 1st.

I did a spit-take of my coffee.

I called Karé immediately.

"Karé, what's happened?" I shouted.

"That was on your royalty statement," she said.

"I can't read that royalty statement!" I screeched.

"It's a bonus. You've gotten so many books pre-ordered, it's a thank-you from Harper-Collins."

"No wonder I'm on Ellington's shitlist!"

"She's just a washed-up has-been since her movie got deemed soft core porn and was the worst-reviewed movie of the year on Rotten Tomatoes. Calm down."

"I can't!"

"You're it, girly. You've made it. You might as well tell your father now."

I groaned. I had no idea how to do that.

"And that first draft of the third book is due on the thirtieth of this month! Remember that!"

* * *

I helped Nina and Tara move to their new apartments in Princeton and Boston respectively after the book debuted. I was a bit sad on the drive home, but I got a few bottles of wine to comfort myself, only to fall into that depression of "this shit's about to blow up in my face." Of all people, I drunk-dialed Ben and got his voicemail. I rambled, not even knowing what I was saying, but probably told him about the whole bullshit with Ellington. I passed out about halfway through the rambled. I woke up with drool all over my pillow and still a bit drunk, so thirsty chugged three bottles of water, but heard the buzzer. I tried to ignore it, but it buzzed again.

"Go away," I said into the intercom.

"Allie, I got your voicemail," Ben said. "Do you want me to come up?"

"Ben?" I cried.

"Yeah, baby, it's me."

"Ben!" I said dizzily, almost falling over. "Ben, I missed you!" I hit the entry button and threw the door open. Ben met me at the door and kissed me so hard, I melted.

I don't think we thought ahead at all: I doubt the door was even closed, but we tore at each other's clothes and just did it on the floor of my living room, tenant's association be damned. We took a break, and he kicked the door shut and we went back to my room and did it again.

I had physically missed the sex so much. So very much. I passed out after the second time, and woke up a few hours later hungover and in an empty bed. Ben had left me a handwritten note.

_Allie,_

_I know you didn't want to see me again, and I'm sorry about last night. I was pretty trashed when I got your message and I feel like I took advantage of you being trashed. I don't know how Ashlyn will take it when I tell her I had sex with somebody else last night. Things are rough between us anyway and I'm sorry. I won't tell her your name. Please don't text me about last night. I want to protect you so she doesn't egg you on the subway or something. Email me, I don't think she has that password._

_Please don't hate me._

_Ben_

Well, that was embarrassing. Never, ever again, will I drunk dial, I promised myself. It was time to cut the cord with him. That was break-up sex if I ever had it before. I was pretty sure things were officially done between Ben and me for good.

My phone rang and it was Karé.

"Alexis, check the link I sent you! Haven't you gotten online this morning? _The New York Times_ Best-sellers list is out for the week!"

"What's going on?" I muttered.

"Check the romance list!"

I clicked the link and #6 on the list was _Benefits_ by Candace Witherspoon. I gasped. I should have been happy, but I wasn't. I was equal parts excited and terrified.

"And it's climbing!" Karé shouted.

What had I gotten myself into?

* * *

Grams announced to the family through email that she was leaving _Hocus Pocus_ in December to focus on other acting projects. I hardly saw her anymore, she was so busy with this, the commercials she was test-shooting for L'Oreal (they wanted her for their anti-aging skincare lines, much to her excitement), and all the directors she and her agent and publicist were talking to about new projects. She called me when she had a moment, and I loved hearing from her. She was burnt out from 'Halloween Everyday.' She promised on her day off to have a family dinner with us and we'd all catch up. I knew I'd have to talk about my senior classes at Columbia and how exciting they were (not).

The first day of classes coincided with the next night that she had off, she was going to meet us at Dad's. We had planned a dinner so that it would be private affair without the paparazzi invading our space and getting up in our faces outside a regular restaurant.

"Hello!" I called as I walked into the Loft with a bottle of wine. Yes, I was turning into a Lush. Not an alcoholic. Alcoholics go to AA.

I heard Jo-jo squeal and she came rolling through the foyer in her activity walker.

"Hi, Jo-jo!" I cried, picking her up out of the walker. She squealed and kicked her chubby legs. I wouldn't surprised if she started walking in the next few months. "How's my baby?"

"She's great," Kate said to me. She came out of the kitchen with wet hair and air-kissed my cheek, taking Jo-jo from me. "We had an exciting day and caught a criminal mastermind on foot."

"Have fun chasing him down?"

"Yes. We got a confession out of him, too," Kate said. "All in a day's work. The baby-sitter said Jo-jo made friends at the park, too."

"You've got buddies?" I asked my sister.

She gurgled in response.

Dad was still in his work clothes, making the last of the beef stroganoff and I set down the wine. "That will go perfectly," he said, seeing my wine. "How were your first day of classes?"

"It's going to be a tough year," I admitted. "I think I'll take my GREs and go straight to graduate school."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure," I said. "I don't want to spend a year or two in the workplace. I just want to get started."

"I don't blame you," Kate said. "Especially in this economy."

"I'm going to jump in the shower before your grandmother's due," Dad said. "Beckett, can you take care of the rest of the meal for me?"

"Sure, honey," Kate said, taking the spoon from him. He kissed her quickly and went to the bedroom.

"Well, it looks like the mushrooms about done," Kate said, stirring the skillet with to spoon. I took Jo-jo from her arms.

"Does Jo need to eat?" I asked.

"No, she's fine, she just had some butternut squash and peas," Kate said. "I kinda miss breast-feeding her, but it just got to be too much when I went back to work. I miss how big it made my boobs, too."

I laughed.

"I was so confident in them," she sighed. "And now they're getting flat. I had the best boobs."

"Did you do that to her, Jo?" I asked my sister.

Jo-jo just smiled at me and gurgled, "Hmmm!"

"She was worth it," Kate said. "I'd trade good boobs and getting stretch marks for her again and again."

The front desk rang Kate's phone as the shower went off in Dad's bathroom. "...That's fine, just bring it up." She hung up. "Front desk says it's really big."

I ran to the front door to open it for the delivery man. I hated it when my packages got forwarded here, but I hadn't been expecting anything. I went back to the kitchen to put Jo-jo down and set the table.

The delivery man knocked on the door and called out, "Hello?"

"Hi!" I called.

"I need somebody to sign for this," he said, holding up an electronic clipboard.

"Look, if I'm not home, it's fine to leave my packages with my super in my building," I said.

"I need to see your license or some other form of ID," he said, bored. "Otherwise, I can't deliver this."

"Oh… okay. Let me get my purse." I ran to my purse and got out my license so I could show him, and then he let me sign for the box.

It was addressed to Candace Witherspoon, like all my swag and ARCs, but the box was enormous.

Huh.

"What is it?" Kate called.

"I don't know," I said.

She came into the foyer with Jo-jo on her hip and a kitchen knife in her other hand. "That's a big delivery, how are you supposed to get that home? What is it?"

"I don't know, I wasn't expecting anything."

I took the knife from her and ran it along the joints of the box so I could open it up. We pulled back the packing foam and we both gasped.

It was a carton of a woman's labia on a cardboard box. I clapped my hand over my mouth. "Oh my God!" I said through my fingers. "Is that a cartoon vagina?"

"Holy shit!" Kate whispered, her own hand over her mouth, too.

There was a letter on the top of the boxes and I read it.

_Dear Candace Witherspoon,_

_We here at Lady Erotica would love to have your name endorse our products. We were highly impressed with the advanced reading copy we got of your book Benefits and we sent you some free samples of you to try. We'd love to work with you…_

"Kill it with fire!" I uttered. "They want to put Candace Witherspoon's name on their products! Dad and Grams cannot see this!"

"The trash chute! Quick!"

"No! The baby!" I shrieked. I grabbed Jo-jo and stuffed her into the walker and sent her rolling across the floor, into Dad and Kate's bedroom. Dad was probably getting dressed and would come out any minute...

We pushed the box over through the hall (who knew vibrators were so damn heavy?) and started tossing them down the chute one-by-one. Right as my hands cleared the last one, the elevator opened.

"Hi, girls!" Grams cried. Both Kate and I jumped a mile. "Whatcha doing?"


	17. Chapter 17

_Disclaimer- I still don't own Castle, Andrew Marlowe does, and I don't want him to sue me for playing in his sandbox. I'm just having fun, I make no moneys._

* * *

I passed the Best Seller's shelf in Barnes and Noble in the Upper West Side.

The steamy cover of _Benefits_ stared back at me in the overall #5 spot. It was #1 on the romance and erotica list. Had been for a while.

I was a hit. But not me. My book had been climbing for almost five months and Karé had sold the rights to over ten foreign countries so far. The money was rolling in and I didn't know what to do with it all.

And still, I couldn't tell anybody about it.

Ellington's new book was not even in the top 20, even on the erotica and romance lists. The reviews said that it was drastically different from her first book series, and it seemed like a different person wrote it.

The thrill of shopping had worn off, I rarely did it anymore. My closet was bursting. Instead, I drank… by myself. Even I was getting worried about how much I was drinking alone.

Tonight I had cleared out my schedule at the New York City release party for the newest book from Kathy Kessler.

Kathy still didn't know who I really was. I was certain of it. But we were still good friends and I wanted to see her as she came through New York. I was planning on hiding out and letting her know by Twitter that I had been there and was proud of her. She really was someone I could confide in, but I still wasn't sure I could trust her with my true identity.

I saw Kathy walk in. She was "chubby" for a reason; she was pregnant with her second child, five months to be exact, but she was so cute pregnant. She looked like a doll with her blonde ringlets, literally. She scanned the store, and I secretly hoped she was looking for Candace Witherspoon. She'd never know until I told her, though. It was sad; Candace had been one of the first people she confided her pregnancy in, and now, she was showing. I was here, but Candace couldn't hug her because Candace wasn't a real person. It was bittersweet. She did wave to me, though. She knew me as Alexis, and was friends with Candace, but had no idea that we were one in the same person.

It was moments like this I felt like I was an imposter. I wasn't trusting myself and my feelings anymore, and I was pretty scared of being exposed. I never thought about what would really happen if I got exposed, but the terror of it kept me in a cage of insecurity. It was coming out in the men I dated, what I talked about with my friends, how introverted I was becoming… it was a nightmare.

Taking a seat in the back, I got out a notebook to take notes and to catch up on my Advanced Middle Eastern studies reading. I put out a tweet to Kathy under Candace's username. I already had an ARC of Kathy's latest book (it had been shipped to Candace and it actually came to my house), and while I wanted to get it signed, I couldn't because I had already read it and blurbed it. The idea of someone other than Ben, Karé, and Kate knowing who I really was terrified me. I was so ready to be done with Candace and just publish as Alexis Castle instead. I was starting to hate Candace and having to lie so much. I didn't like myself for having to lie, deep down. I didn't know what to do.

_ KathyKress Hey, I'm here to see you and get my book signed. Love you, girl!_

I began reading her new book and then the bookstore manager announced her. She had been chatting up some book bloggers and posing for pictures.

Kathy did a really good event; she was funny and engaging and told all sorts of good stories about researching the locations in Santa Barbara and how she and her husband got drunk at the vineyards on their last visit, and that's how she got pregnant. I loved hearing her talk about it, it was so funny. They were so happy together and now the second baby was on it's way. I wasn't sure if I needed to send her baby present as Alexis or Candace.

When I got in line to get my book signed (there were about thirty people at the event) I stepped up to the desk where she was sitting.

"Hi!" she said brightly. "I'm so glad you came, Alexis!"

"Thanks," I said. "It's good to see you, too."

"How's school?"

"I'm busy. One more semester and I'm done."

"Any luck on getting your manuscript sold to a publishing house?" When I had met her at the convention last spring, I had told her about the urban fantasy manuscript I wanted to sell and that I was agented, in the same vein as hers. I didn't tell her I was a published erotica writer. I felt like that was a blackmark on my head.

I shook my head and shrugged.

"We can talk about it at the afterparty. Do you want to come?" she asked.

"Sure!" I said, and stuffed my signed copy of her book in my bookbag.

"Alright! Tell your parents I said hi!"

"Definitely!"

I took the subway to the bar in Midtown, and took a seat at the bar, catching up on my homework. This was just like old times at Dad's book signing parties.

I had heard through the grapevine that Ben and Ashlyn had broken up. She had been pressing him to move in with her in the West Village but he couldn't handle it. I felt so guilty. I had hated her for so long, deep down, but I hadn't told Ben how I felt about him. I had been with him first, but not emotionally attached. I checked his Twitter feed from my phone, and found a few off-handed Tweets about New York traffic and subway shut-downs that annoyed him. He had bought an old non-working motorcycle last summer and restored it to working condition, and was riding it across the bridge to Columbia daily, he tweeted and instagrammed about that.

When Kathy and her husband Joel entered the restaurant, I whirled around to see her with her publicist and a few other people. She waved at me, but was faced down by four other book bloggers she had invited to dinner.

I waited until she was no longer the woman of the hour to approach her.

"Hi, Kathy," I said.

She hugged me. "Alexis! It's so good to see you!" she cried. "You have to tell me about how your other projects are doing."

We got into a conversation about that and before I knew it, we had a table for dinner with the group.

I enjoyed myself around Kathy and her people, but then, I spotted somebody at the bar I didn't think would show up: Ellington. God, didn't she have anything better to do with her time than stalk successful writers? What a troll.

After dinner, I went to check my phone because I was meeting Allison for a glass of wine, but couldn't find it.

I panicked for a moment; Dad would kill me if I lost my phone. Privacy was a premium for us, since he was a famous writer. I ran to the hostess' stand.

"Hi," I said, "Has anybody turned in an iPhone in a T.A.R.D.I.S. case?"

The girl at the hostess stand shook her head. "Sorry."

I tried to retrace my steps; the last time I used my phone was when I got the text from Allison while in the restroom a few minutes ago. The restroom! I opened the door to the restroom to see Ellington standing there with a grin on her face like the Cheshire cat. She looked up when she saw me and wiggled my phone in the air and giggled. I snatched it from her.

"What are you doing with my phone?" I snapped.

"You left it on the counter, silly girl! Or should I call you 'Candace'?" she flashed a smile that showed her entire row of crooked, bleached teeth.

My jaw unintentionally dropped. If I hadn't been so surprised, I'd have played it off and told her I wasn't. But I reacted.

"I cracked your passcode, you really should be more careful about what you tweet. You were signed in as Candace. That's all I needed to know!"

"I'm not…" my voice trailed off.

"Of all the people in the world, I never expected someone like you to be writing erotica. Your book isn't even that good! I hope your daddy likes it, you little heffer!" she drawled. I could tell she was a little drunk.

She just brought my father into this? "You can go to hell," I snapped. "Bite me!"

"Oh, but I won't. Not yet. I know you've got a second book coming out in your series on February 2nd. What a surprise, I have one coming out on January 30th. I'm giving you an ultimatum; you stop the release of that book or I'll out you to the whole world as Candace Witherspoon."

I gasped.

"Yes, I'd ruin your career, just like you've ruined mine. It was you making me look bad at the book convention. And when you called me 'fat' last Christmas in front of everybody, that was the last straw. Oh, I've been saving this up. I'll have your career at Columbia ruined! Do you really think that your professors will pass a little whore and let you graduate? Oh no!" she chuckled. This entitled bitch was enjoying this way too much. I was in a cold sweat. "And your daddy doesn't know you write porn, does he?"

"You evil cunt," I snapped. "You made a fool of yourself when you went after my married father, why are you trying to hold a grudge against me for it? You're starting drama-"

"Correction my dear, YOU started the drama. You stop that book from being published, or I will ruin you!"

* * *

Drinks with Allison were not going to happen tonight. After I texted her to let her know, I emailed Karé on my way home, and begged her to call me whenever she got this. A few minutes later, Karé rang my phone, even though it was almost 11 o'clock.

"What happened?" Karé asked.

"Ellington found my phone in the bathroom of a restaurant," I said, cold sweating. "She's going to expose me!"

"That bitch!"

"She's going to ruin my college career! Nobody's going to take me seriously if they found out I've written an erotica series! She told me to stop the second book in my series from being published."

"We can't stop that."

"We have to!" I cried. "I can't be exposed!"

"There's been too many contracts signed, too much money has passed hands. You'll have to give back a good portion of your advance if you do! The ARCs are already out! Let's not even talk about the foreign sales!"

"What does that mean?" I asked.

"It's impossible unless you want lawsuits," she said. "Publishers are corporations. I can't protect you if you decide to stop the publication of your second novel, they've got contracts and an army of lawyers. Alexis, you knew this when you signed on with me, didn't you? Once we signed the contracts for publication, there's no stopping it. You just sent in the copy edits last week!"

"Can we delay the release?" I asked. "Maybe I can reason with Ellington-"

"It's blackmail! That's illegal! Look, your stepmother's a cop, go to her and ask for some help with the police and I'll find a publicist who can help you deal with this if your real name comes out. Ellington threatening you is illegal and really, really stupid. We'll find a way to play it off. Besides, what's there to be ashamed about? You're a grown-ass woman who has had sex and like it and just happens to write about it. Just calm down and go to your stepmother. She can probably help you stop Ellington from extorting you."


	18. Chapter 18

_Disclaimer- I still don't own Castle, Andrew Marlowe does, and I don't want him to sue me for playing in his sandbox. I'm just having fun, I make no moneys._

* * *

I called Kate the next morning and asked her to meet me for coffee, my treat. She told me that she had no plans other than to go home and made dinner with Dad and Jo-jo, and asked me if I'd like to come over for that.

"No," I said. "It's… it has to do with Candace."

"Oh…" she replied in a stunned silence. "Okay, meet me at the Dean and Deluca in Midtown at 5:30. I can't guarantee there won't be a new murder to investigate."

Classes were hellish that day, but maybe it was all the anxiety attacks I was having. I kept a sixteen ounce water bottle filled with vodka in my bookbag and took intermittent swigs from it through the day to calm my nerves. Yes, I was going from Lush to Drunk in a matter of months.

When I was walking through the Student Union, I saw the TVs on to New York 1; Septimus Lindo had almost fallen off the top of his penthouse balcony in the Lower East Side during a party he was throwing last night. He had dislocated his shoulder from almost toppling off the edge and grasping the ironwork to keep from becoming a pavement pancake. The NYPD was investigating, and there was my stepmother, giving the statement to the cameras. She looked blank-faced and was speaking in an almost monotone voice. The caption read her name.

"We've been investigating what seems to be an attempted murder on one Septimus Lindo the third. We were called to the scene early this morning to investigate the crime scene and have interviewed Mr. Lindo from his hospital bed and he is recovering. If you have information on this crime, please contact us…"

I texted Kate immediately.

_Does this mean no coffee?_

She responded a moment later.

_No, we can still meet. I was just filling in for Gates since she's lost her voice. I requested to be taken off the case._

We requested to be taken off this case b/c we know the Lindos personally. Meet me as planned. It's not that bad. Just tell your father!

I sighed and closed my phone.

At 5:30, I walked into the Dean and DeLuca in Midtown and ordered a decaf latte. Kate showed up once I finished paying and got a decaff coffee for herself. She hugged and kissed me quickly, and we sat down together at a small table.

"Okay, here's what I've got; there's no evidence of her trying to blackmail you, so it's basically your word against hers. And, on top of that, legally, it won't incriminate you to be exposed as Candace Witherspoon-"

"Oh my God, Candace Witherspoon!" the lady next to us cried. "Is she here?"

Obviously a tourist, since we were practically in Times Square. "Not to be rude, but ma'am, this a private conversation," Kate responded, annoyed.

"Oh, sorry," she said, putting a marker in her book and standing up. As if the universe was mocking me, the lady was reading my book.

"Tourists," Kate and I chorused once she was out of earshot.

Once she was gone, Kate and I continued.

"Threatening somebody is very dangerous, though. You can get a restraining order, but you have to have evidence."

"The only evidence I have is the Twitter conversation between myself… well, my alter ego, and her from last spring. She's never threatened physical violence."

Kate sighed and shook her head. "Ellington Taylor is so freaking unprofessional. No real writer acts like this, I swear, and she's attacking you for no good reason. You're not provoking her, are you?"

I shook my head. "I'm trying to pretend she doesn't exist," I said. "But finding my phone." I closed my eyes and groaned.

"You know what? Just come clean to your father. Who else is going to care if you write erotica?"

"My professors at Columbia, Grams-"

"Oh come on, your grandmother would find it hilarious that you wrote a best-selling erotica novel," she scoffed. "And I bet half your professors would find you really pragmatic for writing under a pen name to escape your father's fame and succeed on your own. Hell, there's always the story of Belle Knox at Duke."

"But, I ca-"

"Alexis!" she snapped. "I'm getting fucking sick and tired of listening you moan and whine about being exposed as a writer! I'm going home and telling your father myself if you don't do it right now! He's going to be more hurt that you've lied to him all this time and won't care that you wrote a book with sex in it. I know him! Come on, this is getting ridiculous! Why are you so hung up on it?"

"No," I said, standing up. "I'm not going to tell him if I don't have to."

"Listen to me, Alexis," Kate said. "You're turning into someone who's scared and anxious all the time because you're keeping a secret. A secret that's not even that bad. And I'm saying this as someone who really loves you, but this book is turning into skeletons in the closet, and the only way you can overcome them is to tell your father."

* * *

It felt like I was walking into my funeral when I arrived at the Loft. My legs were shaking as we walked inside.

"Hi, honey," Kate said. "I brought Alexis with me."

"Hey! Two of my three favorite girls! We can all have dinner together!"

Dad was making dinner in the kitchen with Jo-jo rolling around in her walker, observing things.

"Alexis has something to tell you," Kate said.

I saw spots in my vision and my ears were buzzing.

Dad could feel it in the air.

"Oh, okay," he said quietly. "Why don't we go into the office?"

I followed him feeling like I was walking into my funeral.

"So, tell me," Dad said, sitting down at his deskchair as I took a seat on the couch.

I had been sent to the principal's office once when I was seven for pushing a little boy into the mud named Kyle who had repeatedly been trying to flip my skirt up and calling him a shithead (I had heard it in one of the movies Dad had let me watch while he was working on a novel over the summer). I had been so terrified, I almost wet my pants, but I did start crying the principal was so intimidating. I got off with a warning, but swore I'd never get in that much trouble ever again. And I felt the same way right now. "What's so severe Beckett had to bring you home and speak for you?"

I took a deep breath.

"You're not pregnant, are you?"

"No!" I cried, shocked. "Why would you think that?"

"I don't know! You're green and look like you're about to pass out, you tell me!"

I took a few more deep breaths. "Dad, have you ever heard of Candace Witherspoon?"

"Yes, of course. I see her name every week on _Publisher's Weekly._"

"I'm getting dizzy, just a second," I tried to breathe some more. "I… I know who she is. She's me. I wrote the book _Benefits._"

Dad chuckled and for a split second, I realized he thought I was playing a joke on him. Then, it hit him. "You're serious, aren't you?"

I caught myself whimpering and nodded.

The look of disgust mixed with disappointment on his face. "How could you lie to me? For long? A year? A year and a half? Is that why the ARC disappeared from this house and nobody knows where it is?"

I tried to breathe, but couldn't. I needed some more vodka.

"Dad, I'm in trouble," I whispered. "Ellington Taylor knows who I am and wants to expose me-"

"Ellington Taylor knows your penname before I do? Alexis, how can you keep me in the dark this long-"

"I have good reason!"

"No, you don't!" he shouted. "You should have told me, this is a big deal! A very big deal! The moment you accepted the advance from Harper-Collins. You've kept a secret for this long, didn't you think about how big of a deal it was going to be to get published-"

"I didn't think it was going to be with the Big 5 until my agent had already sold it-"

"Is that why you've been so chummy with Karé Baxter on Twitter? This- this is inexcusable, Alexis! I knew you've been up to something, but for Christ's Sake- what were you thinking? Were you even thinking at all? Just- get out of my house!"

"Dad, I need you right now! This is going to ruin my college career-"

"What the hell am I supposed to do about it? I_ can't_ do anything about it, you did this to yourself! I don't know how I can fix this! Just go! I can't look at you right now!"

I picked up my purse and ran.

* * *

I had never imagined things getting to this level. I had never had Dad blow up at me like that, ever. Dad never yelled at me, but I had never screwed up this badly before. He actually threw me out of his house. I cried on the way home and the tears soothed my burning cheeks.

I had always had my father as a safety net. I had always been able to take care of myself, but that was because I had my father's support behind me. I suddenly felt like I was falling through space and it was terrifying.

When I got home to my freshly-painted apartment, I sat down on the couch and sobbed. I thought that taking a bath would make me feel better, so I went to the bathroom and ran the hot water and got out some bath salts. While I let the tub fill up, I poured a huge glass of red wine for myself in the kitchen when there was a buzz at the door.

"Who is it?"

"It's Kate. And Jo-jo. Please, let us in. It's getting cold out here and Jo-jo gets ear infections."

I opened the door. A moment later, Kate walked in with an unhappy Jo-jo.

"I don't think this could get any worse," I muttered. "Dad hates me now."

"He doesn't hate you, he's just really hurt. I don't think he wanted you to see him upset, that's why he threw you out."

"See, I knew he'd get upset," I said, sitting down, cradling my head in my hands.

"He's mad at me too when I admitted I knew about it," she said and sighed, sitting down next to me. "I honestly thought it wasn't a good idea to play mediator. He's mad at both of us, now, for keeping secrets. I'm on the couch tonight, it looks like."

"Oh, Kate," I moaned. "This really blew up in my face, didn't it?"

"I think, at this point, the best thing we can do is you've got to apologize, when he's ready. I kept a secret in my marriage. It's so much worse when it's your spouse, not your child." She squeezed Jo-jo close to her.

"Do you want to stay the night?"

"No, I'm just giving him space until I can apologize. And really mean it. God, I feel it now. He's so mad at me, I can tell it's going to take a while for him to cool off. Usually, I'm the one getting cranky at him."

"I feel like I'm falling through space, and I'm terrified," I admitted. "I don't like that I lied to him for so long. I lied to everybody. I hate it. I can't imagine how much everybody's going to hate me."

"I think you've built this up in your head so much that you probably think it's going to be worse than it actually is."

"What do I do?" I whined.

"You know what to do, I've been telling you for months, Alexis. It's time to do it."

* * *

This was a nightmare. I had never realized how much I needed my father's emotional support before now. And I was responsible for this fight between Dad and Kate. I had leaned on her too much these last few months.

The next morning I woke up hung over. What a way to spend a Saturday. The more I thought about it, the more I realized I was making excuses. I couldn't have it both ways. The way I had done things without telling my father when I got the publishing offer, that was wrong. I had really thought I'd get away with publishing under a penname and nobody would know. I hadn't truly thought things out when I started writing erotica. All I had wanted so desperately was to prove myself.

I was wrong.

It was time to humble myself and grovel in front of Dad as well as Kate for forgiveness. If they'd even talk to me. I had never considered how important my family was. I hadn't meant to cause disruption between Dad and Kate. I loved Kate; a lot. She had been a good friend- better than a good friend, a mother- to me. She had taught me a lot about myself and the truth about my relationship with Ben, if I'd actually face it. I wasn't facing anything anymore because I was too scared. When did I get this scared? I should have been honest with him, but I had been carrying too much baggage from breaking up with Pi to tell him that I cared about him as more than just a friend.

I had lost Ben. We had broken up. We had even had drunken break-up sex to end it. But he had been with me through the whole thing. Against my better judgment, I picked up the phone and dialed his number.

I was expecting to get his voicemail, but he picked up.

"Hi," he said.

"Hi. Got a minute?"

"Yeah, sure. I'm actually in Brooklyn right now."

I bit my lips together. "I need to apologize for something."

"Oh yeah?"

"This is so hard to say-" I sighed.

"I had feelings for you, Allie."

"You did?"

"Yeah. I didn't think you did, so I went along with things and had to talk myself into being with Ashlyn because I thought you didn't feel for me the same way I felt about you."

"That's what I was going to tell you. I mean, I was waiting for _you_ to tell me that. So, we've gone through the break up, the break-up sex, we've stopped talking, so we're supposed to be over?"

"But… I'm not over you."

"Me either... Well, what now?"

"Will you meet me on the Brooklyn Bridge in an hour?"

"Yeah, I will."

* * *

I took a cab to the Brooklyn Bridge and took my first few steps out into the bridge. There was some kind of festival going on today, a Holiday-themed one, where some tents were up and people were walking around in their winter coats and ski hats and boots. I had worn a knee-length dress with tights and my peacoat and boots, and I was freezing. Ben was at a jewelry tent, buying something when I saw him. I waved, unsure if he was going to tell me that we couldn't really be together. He saw me, and walked right towards me. He scooped me up in a hug.

"I'm sorry I didn't say anything," I said into his chest. "I'm carrying a lot of baggage."

"So am I," he admitted. "We'll just start over. I still have feelings for you."

"Sounds good to me," I said, wiping away some errant tears. I couldn't imagine a better feeling in the world.

* * *

We went to a coffee shop by the bridge a half an hour later. He held my hand the whole way as I told him how Ellington had uncovered who I was and was going to use it against me, and how I had told my dad I published a novel and had kept it a secret from him, and how afraid I was of being ruined in my college career for writing erotica. He told me about how he had told Ashlyn he had a friend with benefits last Christmas, and that was what made her ask for monogamy. And once he gave into monogamy, she got possessive and controlling and jealous of everyone in Ben's life, and he ended up breaking up with her by August.

"It didn't last," he said, shrugging. "It felt like a chore having to text her my every move. If was taking a piss, she'd text me, _'where are you? Why haven't you told me what you're doing?_' and I was like, '_I'm too busy holding my dick_.' It was like she was expecting my mystery friend with benefits to jump out from around the corner and start fucking me in the middle of the street."

I laughed, the first time I had laughed since Kathy's booksigning.

"I couldn't take it," he continued. "And I kept on with her for so long because I felt like if I broke one girl's heart- yours- I had to make another one happy to make up for it. And it got to the point with Gary Birkstram- you know Gary, one of the guys in the MFA with me- he said, 'Dude, you both are so unhappy, do you think sticking around is going to _make_ her happy?' And when she asked me- I'm sorry, she _told_ me- we were going to move in together for the fall, I couldn't stand the idea of being with her twenty-four seven. And it finally sank in with me that I could never make her happy. And I'd never be happy. It was like a prison sentence, dating her."

"I didn't know she was such a bitch."

"She's not a bitch," he corrected me.

"Sorry," I mumbled.

"Well, I've been talking bad about her, you'd probably think that she is one. But, the surprise of finding out that I wasn't seeing just her made her really insecure and she started making demands. And I gave into them. She told me when we broke up that I had destroyed her, but really? She destroyed herself with insecurity and was making me miserable at the same time. It was kind of a rebound."

"Did you love her?"

He shook his head. "I wanted to, to make it up to the universe what I did to you. I could see it in your face when I left that day, I could feel it. I know I hurt you."

"I stayed in bed for the next day."

"Aw, honey, I'm sorry!" he apologized. "I just remember how you wouldn't look me in the eye. You know, I really wanted to stay friends with you, that was all I could offer at the time."

"So you knew I had feelings for you?"

"Yeah."

"Yeah, Kate told me that having feelings for a friend with benefits is the biggest mistake you can make"

"It is."

"I got really close to her for a while last summer. Until she finally told me to cut the bullshit the other night and tell Dad about the book. I've caused a fight between the two of them."

"Just reach out. He's your father. I doubt you could do anything to make him stop loving you."

"He kicked me out of his house," I admitted.

"He did?"

I shrugged. "Well, having a daughter who writes about sex in graphic detail has got to be a shock for him. And a wife that kept it a secret."

"How long ago was that?"

"About three days ago."

He opened the door to a little coffee shop and let me through first. "Send him a text. After you sit down with us."

"With who?"

"With me," a bearded man in the corner said. He was reading a hard-cover book and was wearing a tweed suit with a red bow tie.

"Allie, this is one of the professors I work with at Columbia, Dr. Barrett."

"Hi," I said, "Nice to meet you."

"Nice to meet you, too."

"I'll order some coffee for you," Ben said, pulling out the chair for me and helping me take my coat off. I sat down. "Soy latte, just like you like?"

"Yes, please."

"So, what Mr. Haversham tells me," Dr. Barrett began, putting a bookmark in his tome, "is that you've written something a bit risqué and got it published, but have a problem with a competing author trying to expose your real name to the community."

"Yes."

"Just to clear things up, my dear, what's your penname?"

"Candice Witherspoon," I admitted.

"As long as you're not that God-awful E.K. Taylor."

"You don't like her?"

"Mr. Haversham told me about both of you, I couldn't keep which one of you was his friend. But Ms. Taylor's book... atrocious. It read like bad fanfiction."

"Oh."

"Yours, though, that had a little more plot. Not much, though. But you have a better understanding of English grammar, punctuation, and character-building."

I guffawed in shock. "You've read my book?"

"Yes, I read a lot of books, young lady. Erotica is one of the oldest forms of literature there is. It's human nature to be fascinated about the orgasm and what leads up to it. That's why it's become so taboo. I'll go with Neil Gaiman's explanation of why he writes sex into his books; you wouldn't skip writing about eating dinner if it were pertinent to your plot. Why would you skip writing about sex, then?"

"Good point," I admitted.

"I got the feeling that your trilogy had a larger story arc than what could meet the eye. Unlike Ms. Taylor's book, yours wasn't using sex as filler. And I think that's where you have something worthwhile. So tell me what's going on that's causing you so many problems?"

Ben came back with two cups of coffee and set them down in front of us. He didn't say anything, just sat down and slipped an arm around my shoulders.

"Well, to start with, my father didn't know I've published an erotica book until about three days ago. And he kicked me out of his house when he found out. But, that's not what I need help with the most," I began.

"Ellington Taylor's decided she's going to expose Allie as the writer of the series to destroy her, her writing career, and her college career," Ben explained. "If she doesn't stop the publication of the second book that will probably eclipse Ellington's next novel series. I don't want to see that happen."

"If you really think the Columbia administration is going to kick you out for writing erotica, then you don't really understand how seriously liberal the general consensus of professors are at the University. Chances are, they won't care about you doing this, just like the wouldn't care if you posed nude in photography or in a human art form class. She can't harm you with your professors. But, on the otherhand, nothing can guarantee the reaction of the student body. Do you think you can handle classes if everybody in the student body knows you and who you are?"

I bit my lip and thought about it. Belle Knox at Duke University rang through my mind. She had fled Duke after she was outed as a porn star due to the threats from her fellow students.

"I didn't tell you who her father is," Ben said.

"What's your real name, again?" Dr. Barrett asked.

"Alexis Castle."

"You're Rick's daughter."

I nodded and took a sip of my latte and nodded. "He's pretty mad at me right now."

"As would be expected," Ben added in.

"I know Ricky. I taught him when he studied at Columbia. He's a good man, a progressive person, and from the way he speaks about you, he's a loving father. He'll get over this in time."

I nodded.

"She's literally got nothing on you," he said. "My father was an alcoholic and got sober before I graduated with my bachelor's. And he wore a pendant with this on it, a quote from George Bernard Shaw. I still have it. It says, _If you can't get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you'd best teach it to dance._ So, be honest with who you really are and dance away, my dear."

* * *

After having a coffee with Dr. Barrett, Ben took me back to my apartment building.

"You're coming in, right?" I asked.

"I don't know, there's something to be said for taking it slow…"

"Oh shut up, you know you want to," I teased.

"Of course I do."


	19. Chapter 19

_Disclaimer- I still don't own Castle, Andrew Marlowe does, and I don't want him to sue me for playing in his sandbox. _

* * *

The grey, wintry morning light was filtering through the bedroom onto Ben. It was a perfect night and a perfect morning. The sex hadn't been so to-the-point and matter-of-fact. I was his moon goddess again, I allowed him in. We enjoyed it and relished in it. For the first time, he told me I was beautiful, he had always thought so. Afterwards, he caressed the curve of my hip until he fell asleep.

I ran my hand over Ben's bare back, the shrapnel scars felt new to my touch again. He stirred.

"Honey?" he asked, lifting his head, glancing at me.

"Hi," I replied. It was cold, so I had gotten into my flannel pajama pants and a long-sleeve t-shirt in the night. Ben, for some reason, had kicked off most of the covers and was laying naked in the bed beside me. "Dat ass!" I pinched on his butt cheeks and he jumped, crying out. "I missed it!" He clapped a hand over his cheek where I had gotten him.

"Dat ass is freezing, thank you very much," he joked. "Where are the covers?"

"Hey, I'm enjoying the view," I replied.

He jumped on me and kissed me, making me squeal, despite the morning breath we both had. We had sex again and then took a shower together before making coffee.

"You know, you're going to have to apologize to your parents, eventually," Ben pointed out.

"I don't know for certain if my dad's angrier at me for writing about sex or for getting published without tell him about it."

"Probably the not telling him about it. Allie, you've got to deal with Ellington, too. And I think you'll be stronger with your parents on your side."

"I know. I'm going to apologize. But I don't want to apologize while they're still angry, you know?"

"Just ask them if they're still mad."

I thought about it. "I'll send him a text." I got up from my chair.

"Do NOT apologize over text message!" Ben warned.

"I'm not! I'm just asking if it's okay to come to apologize."

I opened a text and sent it to both Dad's cell phone.

_Are you still angry with me, or is it okay for me to come over and apologize and tell you how much I love you?_

I set my phone down and took a deep breath.

"Okay, I'll just have to wait on them to tell me it's okay to come over," I admitted.

"Alright," Ben said. "Do you want to go get some bagels and lox?"

"Look at you, like a true New Yorker! No more Southern Fry-ups?"

"No, we'll save that for a later date."

* * *

While Ben and I were eating breakfast at the bagel shop a block away, I got the text message from Dad.

_If you'd like to come over, that's fine._

"Well, he wants me to come over."

"Take advantage of it. Do you need me there for moral support?"

I shook my head. "No, I need to do this on my own. I've got to be a grown-up about this."

I took the subway to Tribeca and walked to Dad's apartment. The Christmas lights were up in the windows, and I felt a huge sense of dread. Instead of running away, I faced it and took the elevator up. The front door was unlocked and when I opened it, Jo-jo was rolling around in her walker and she grinned up at me.

"Hi, sweetheart," I said, squatting down to lift her out. Her little legs flailed and she gurgled for me. I kissed her. "Dad? Kate?"

"We're in the living room," Dad said.

"Hi," I said, walking in. They were on the couch, Kate was doing the New York Times crossword and Dad had his laptop in his lap.

"Well, I've had some time to calm down," Dad said. "I think we both have."

"Okay... here goes. I'm sorry I kept secrets from you, Dad. This just blew up in my face when my agent shopped the manuscript around the Big 5 and the liked it. I thought it wasn't going to do that well, and nobody would read it, but I'd have publishing credits so it would be easier to do another project that wasn't so taboo. I've written one already, honest, she's got it as we speak. I guess I shouldn't have tried so hard to write something publishable because I did too well. I'm sorry I lied about things. It changed me and I don't like who I am right now. I don't like that I kept something so big from you and I caused a fight between you and Kate. I just wanted to be a successful writer without being connected to someone really powerful in the industry. I will always be your daughter, but I wanted to be a writer, too. And not have people say, '_You only did it because you're Richard Castle's daughter, you had an 'in' and you had it easy! You didn't work hard for this!_' I did work hard, though."

Dad was watching me with a stony expression. He and Kate exchanged a glance and I finally saw the edges of his lips quirk up. "I guess it runs in the family, then. But honey, why didn't you tell me? You used to tell me everything."

"I thought I could just get through this and then I could pursue writing under another penname. I even had it picked out."

"What is it?"

"Harper Rogers. I wrote another book and everything, and I queried it twenty times and nobody would look at it and..."

Kate cleared her throat in Dad's direction.

"Wanna know a secret honey?" Dad asked.

"Sure."

"You know how I said I queried my first novel-length project twenty times? Add a zero to the end of that number, and that's the real number of queries I sent out on four different projects over four years before an agent would even look at me."

"You lied about that?"

"It would look pretty pathetic on my website if I said I queried that many agents before being taken on."

"Alexis, you sent out… _how many_ query letters before hooking an agent?" Kate asked.

"Twenty-one."

"Oh my God," Dad muttered. "I'm gonna kill you, only twenty-one? That's like getting a hole in one on the first tee in your very first golf game."

"That's really that good?" I asked, surprised.

"Yes. Sheer luck or you're just naturally that good."

"And the sex doesn't bother you?"

"I felt pretty disgusting when I realized I had read a sex scene you had written, but I know a certain middle-schooler did the same thing with my books, didn't you?"

"Ugh!" I blushed. Dad and Kate chuckled.

"Okay, I confirmed it. Rick already knew."

"See, I noticed a lot more about you than you thought I did," Dad said.

"How angry are you that I wrote about sex?"

"I was a little at first, but I write it in _my_ books, too. What's the difference? And I'll stand behind that, even if people try to shame you over it. One thing that bothers me is that you've done all those things-"

"Ew! No, Dad, I haven't! Maybe like half, and mostly the more tame things."

"Good thing you never finished it, Castle," Kate teased.

"Beckett told me that you took the ARC and hid it."

"No, I tossed it out the window."

"See? That's my girl!" Kate joked. "We didn't tell you about the giant box of dildos, did we?"

"What?" Dad cried.

"Kate, no!" I cried.

"Oh, we need to tell him, it was funny!" Kate cried.

We (as in I was blushing, and saying 'uh-huh' and 'that happened' while Kate told it) told the story about the giant box that was delivered a few months ago. Dad was blushing, but laughing so hard, and finally, I succumbed, too. We were finally laughing again as family. It felt good. And I felt more like myself than I had in a long time.

"You are a really talented writer, Alexis," Dad said. "You know, I kept it a secret from my mother when I queried my first few projects because she thought writing was a silly passion of mine where I avoided reality when I told her about it. But once I was sold a book and got my first advance, she claimed she encouraged me all along and that's why I got published; her mothering. That was such crap."

"But Dad, I didn't want to ride your coattails."

"I know. I know. You had good reason to lie, but it wasn't right. I can understand keeping the querying and editor shopping a secret, but I wish you had told me when you sold it."

"I'm sorry. I can't say it enough."

"'_Sorry'_ doesn't_ change_ the content. When you decided to write something that's kind of taboo, didn't you think about how this is going to affect any political aspirations you have?" he asked.

"It's true. If I had something like this attached to my name, I'd never be able to succeed as a police officer," Kate added in.

"Wait a second, Beckett. You've bragged to me about being a nude art model in college," Dad said. Kate only smirked mischievously. "You don't think that's going to come back to haunt you somehow?"

"Hey, I own that," Kate scoffed. "I'm proud of it."

"And that's what you've got to do if you don't want Ellington ruining your life," Dad said.

Something caught my vision in the corner of my eye; I realized it was Jo-jo toddling around in her diaper and footed onesie- completely on her own. "Jo-jo's walking!" I cried, pointing. She walked into the couch and grabbed it.

"My baby's walking?" Kate cried hopping up to catch her. "We've been trying to get her to walk for weeks!" She squeezed Jo-jo in her arms and kissed her. "My baby's walking while we were busy paying attention to our other baby!"

* * *

I felt surprisingly light when I left. Finals went relatively smoothly, and then the Christmas season started up again. Grams did her last show, and I asked if I could bring Ben along. We got him in and he got to see my grandmother in her full glory as Winnifred Sanderson. As always on the lead's last night of the show, the other actors were allowed to ad-lib a bit about how much they were going to miss the legendary Martha Rogers, but I knew deep down that she was ready to go and pursue other projects that were coming her way. At the good-bye party, there were some tears from her fellow castmates, but Grams announced, "It's best to leave at the height of the party, not when it's winding down." That party that lasted until about three in the morning. Ben and I sneaked out and went home to my apartment and made some noise of our own.

The Society Christmas parties started and I was not looking forward to them. Ben needed to go to Cincinatti to do some more research on President Taft for his historical novel MFA project, and had to leave me the week of Christmas, although he swore he'd be home for New Year's.

I was sure I'd just claim I had a senior thesis to complete so I could avoid them (I didn't want to run into Ellington or Sept for obvious reasons) but I had to show up to a few of them. Kate skipped a lot of them herself.

I did go to the Meher family's party, or, was dragged to it. It was going just fine until I was coming out of the bathroom and an arm shot out in front of me.

"Hi there, Alexis," Sept said, a hungry look in his eye. His left arm was still in a sling, but he had me cornered. "Where are you going?"

"Home, now that you're here," I responded.

"I'll just call on Candace Witherspoon, and see if she wants you to stay," he whispered into my ear.

I gasped and wrung away from him.

"How often do you have sex? How often are you fucking random men? Do you go for women-"

I slipped out of his grip, but he followed me.

"I'll tell everyone who you really are unless you fuck me."

"Ugh! No!" I cried.

"You'll never be invited to another party again," he warned.

"With this group? That would be welcome," I replied. "You're disgusting."

"And you're practically a porn star. You do it with everybody."

"I'll sleep with who I want to sleep with, Sept," I snapped. "And I'm not having sex with you, you prick." I was near the coat check desk by now. "Hi!" I cried, hanging over my coat check token. "Can I get my coat please, I'm in a hurry, for Alexis Castle?"

"Here you are," the coat check girl said, getting my coat out. Sept was gone as I put on my coat. I found him stalking the entrance.

"You'll fuck me. Eventually. You know, I read your book and all I could was imagine was you all splayed out like that."

"What is so special about me that you want to have sex with me so badly?" I asked. "It's not like you don't rape enough girls in the sand dunes in the Hamptons and get away with it."

"I want you because you don't know what you want. _Every. Woman. Wants. Me_."

"Every woman without standards," I snorted, walking out the door. "You are so slimy. Fuck off, Sept."

What an asshole. He tried to blackmail me into sleeping with him. Dick. I could take him to the cleaners for that.

* * *

I spent Christmas Eve night at home with Dad, Kate, Grams, and Jo-jo. Jo-jo was walking all over the place and would cry and throw a fit if one of us tried to pick her up. Grams was relaxing and enjoying Christmas Eve, but Jim Beckett was running a Christmas Eve party for AA and was going to midnight mass later. Kate kept on weighing in on whether she wanted to go to Midnight Mass with her father or not.

"I didn't tell you guys this, but Sept Lindo told me he'd expose my identity as Candace Witherspoon if I didn't sleep with him."

Dad and Kate's faces twisted into disgust.

"Ugh, he is _so_ revolting," Kate muttered. "Come on, we're going on to the police station and filing a restraining order."

"You think so, too?" I asked.

"I knew Septimus Lindo the first. Womanizer, tons of bastard children," Grams said. "There was a rumor that he went to Asia for the child sex trade. Disgusting old man. Pervert. It runs in the family."

"Money doesn't give you morals," Dad noted. "Alexis, we're getting a restraining order on him."

"He made my skin crawl when I interviewed him in the hospital after his accident," Kate shivered. "He was stoned on barbituates the night of his attempted murder, that's why he doesn't remember anything. Narcotics won't arrest him because his family has too much money and can buy a judge."

"That's shame," Dad noted. "He's such an…"

"Do you think we can really get a restraining order on him?" I asked. "If his father owns judges?"

Kate shook her head. "I doubt it. But it's worth a try. Okay, I've got to get dressed for mass if I'm going to go. I really can't stay."

"Baby, it's cold outside," Dad joked.

"You're so cute, Castle, no wonder I married you," she said in monotone. She stood up and kissed him on the top of his head.

"I'll go with you," I said, even though I counted myself as an agnostic. It couldn't hurt to listen to the Christmas music.

"Thank you, Alexis," Kate said.

We left for the church around ten-forty-five to try and get a seat. We met Jim Beckett outside and there were seats still waiting at eleven.

The mass, despite my lack of belief, was so beautiful. Afterwards, Jim hailed a cab and said goodnight to us, he'd see us in the morning, and we decided to take the subway home.

Dad had texted me about just staying at his house tonight so I didn't miss Jo-jo getting to her Christmas presents in the morning.

"I might as well tell you something now," Kate said as we got into the packed subway car. "An early Christmas present. I'm pregnant again."

"Oh, Kate, you are?" I cried. "I'm so excited for you!" I hugged her the way I should have hugged her when she told me she was pregnant with Jo-jo. Their family was expanding, this was great news.

"Thanks. I'm excited again. Having a baby, it really changed my life. And me. I love being a mom," she admitted. "I really do."

"How far along are you?" I asked.

"About six weeks. That's it. The baby's due in July this time. It's going to suck being in my third trimester in July, but I can't wait. I really can't."

"Is that why you've backed out of a lot of Christmas parties this year?"

"Yeah. That and I really don't like those people. They don't like me. I'm supposed to be sorry I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth and have WASP genes or something."

"Sept Lindo. That's all I need to not like the society people. I guess not wanting to sleep with him makes me new money."

"God, they're all a bunch of ass holes. That's called 'having standards'."

"A fistful of ass holes?" I asked.

She laughed. "Yeah, they are."

We arrived at the Loft, and the lights were still on. Ben was sitting on the couch drinking a beer talking to Dad.

"Ben!" I cried.

"Allie!" he cried, standing up. I squealed, running up and jumping on him, wrapping my legs around his middle to hug him as hard as I could.

"Merry Christmas," he said, kissing me quickly in front of my parents.

"I thought you were going to be in Cinci until Monday!"

"No," he said as I let go of him. "It was too depressing."

"I flew him in. Merry Christmas, honey," Dad said.

"Thank you, Daddy! Two early presents in one night!"

"I told her," Kate admitted.

"Are you spending the night?" I asked Ben.

"Here?" he asked, looking around.

"You might as well," Dad said. "Your old room has fresh sheets on the bed. Just... be courteous." He grimaced.

"Alright," I said, taking Ben's hand. "Come on! Good night! Merry Christmas!"

"Thank you, Mr. Castle! Good night! Goodnight, Detective Beckett!" Ben called over his shoulder as we climbed the stairs with his suitcase.

"I'm so glad you came home!"

"Home?" Ben repeated. This was my father's house.

"Yeah. I mean… back to New York."

"Yeah. I guess New York is my home, now."

I told him all about the midnight mass as we got ready for bed. He admitted that staying at an old marine friend's house while nobody was home was kind of creepy in Cinci, and he didn't want to sit around and get drunk on Christmas Day all by himself. He missed the South for the first time, he admitted. He had gotten most of his research done that he wanted anyway and was just waiting on his return flight. I told him about Sept Lindo's gross advances on me earlier this week, and he told me if Sept did that again, he'd personally kill him and actually make it happen, unlike the attempted murder earlier this year. I told him that Kate was pregnant again, and that lightened his mood up. We got in bed and I turned up the radiator. We went to bed and fell asleep almost immediately. It had been a long day.

I woke up in the morning to fresh snow on the window sill and Jo-jo had opened my bedroom door, and walked in.

"Hi, monkey!" I cried, sitting up in bed. I picked her up and kissed her temple. "Are you ready for presents?"

"Uh-huh," she responded.

"Good morning, Jo," Ben said, sitting up, wiping the sleep from his eyes. I heard a knock on the door; Grams had already arrived, and Jim Beckett was on his way. We got dressed and brushed our teeth, but I changed Jo-jo's diaper and made sure she was clean and dry before taking her downstairs. Dad and Kate had already made breakfast, but we started coffee while Jo-jo wanted to open presents. When Jim finally arrived with an armful of presents, we let Jo-jo tear into them. I think she more liked tearing the wrapping paper up, she didn't care what was in the boxes.

We put her down for a mid-morning nap after the presents were open and made some Monkey Bread, a tradition Dad and I had started years ago on our first Christmas alone together (I think I was six when it started), and put on a fresh pot of coffee. While the Monkey Bread was still hot and smelled good, we ate it in the living room, watching the Macy's Christmas Day Parade. Jim Beckett headed out to run a Christmas Day AA meeting, and I snuggled into Ben by the fireplace as Dad asked him what his plans were after graduation. Ben said he was interested in teaching creative writing, and had a few leads at the New School in Brooklyn and a few other classes around the city for adults.

"I'd like to announce something," I said. "I don't know that I'm going to apply for graduate school for next fall."

"But honey, you took your GREs already."

"I know. But, I'd kind of like to stay in New York. There's a lot to do, and I already make a good living and… I want to be there when the baby's born. Maybe the year after next. And actually, I don't know that I'll go to graduate school for international politics. It's fascinating, but I'd rather write about it than live it. Nobody in the Middle East is going to work with me once I come out as Candace Witherspoon. I was looking into the foreign service last year, but all the politics surrounding that and the danger, and it's not always glamorous locations…"

"DC's not all it's cracked up to be, either," Kate admitted. "You do the right thing, and you end up losing your job. Did I ever tell you how I got fired from the General Attorney's office?"

"She saved an innocent woman's life," Dad added.

"Thanks for ruining the story before I could tell it, Castle," Kate said. We laughed.

"I like writing. I like it better because that's what I've always wanted to do. And I'm doing it right now," I admitted.

"Yeah," Dad agreed. "Do what you love. Then it'll never feel like a job."

"Amen," Ben said, yawning into his beer.

"I'd just like to read something you wrote without any guilt, Alexis," Dad added in.

"Same here, old man!"

"Have I ever told you how you make me proud?"

"Aw, I love you Dad."

"Even if you are writing porn."

* * *

The fun and excitement of the holidays swirled into New Year's Eve. Ben and I decided that we'd have our own New Year's party in my apartment. I knew he missed the South, so I made a Southern Fry-Up of pork bacon, fried eggs, cheese grits, and sausage links for our dinner at about ten o'clock.

"Have you chosen your New Year's resolution?" I asked as we ate dinner.

"To get an agent," he said. "And to sell my MFA project."

"Aww, honey, that's a great goal!" I cried. "I'll recommend you to Baxter Literary-"

"No, I'll do it on my own," he said. "Just like you."

"I can't recommend you to anybody?"

He shook his head. "You can help me compile a list of agents to query, though."

"I don't mind doing that."

We spent the change of the New Year in the bathtub, him holding me and listening to the Weeks channel on Spotify on my iPad on the bathroom counter.


	20. Chapter 20

_Disclaimer- I still don't own Castle, Andrew Marlowe does, and I don't want him to sue me for playing in his sandbox. I'm just having fun, I make no moneys._

* * *

The spring semester started mid-January, and I put in my intention to graduate at Columbia. Ben was spending the night so often in my apartment, we joked we wouldn't have to move anything if he moved in. But, he didn't move, at least not yet.

I watched as Ellington's newest erotica novel came out and watched the New York Times Bestseller list. She wasn't getting that far that fast. She got even more mean comparisons to her first series, again, and it seemed her career was in a decline. And _Broken_ was rising up the pre-order charts as if it had a fire lit underneath it.

I talked to Karé once she got back from her three week vacation where she was cut off from communication on a Pacific Island, and was catching up on NaNoWriMo idiot unedited queries. I managed to avoid Sept Lindo since that night he tried to accost me. I knew that if I ever ran into him again, I'd knock the shit out of him if he tried to come onto me.

The day before my book premiere came, and I had the evening off from classes to get ready for the midnight releases.

There were book release parties for _Broken_ in bookstores all over the country; one of the biggest ones was in the Upper West Side's Barnes & Nobles, and it was going to start selling at midnight. Ben and I walked in that night together, and the Barnes and Nobles was filled. Dad and Kate said they were going to come by and support me in case Ellington showed up and made a scene. I saw Ellington and she was doing a bad job of hiding. She was standing there with her big sunglasses on in the middle of the night and her giant black trench coat, a frown on her face. I swore I saw a fever blister on her lip, though. She saw me and glared, but darted off. Ben held my hand and we got some coffee at the Starbucks counter. We both needed a pick-me-up.

Karé texted me about a half hour before the book release.

_Are you actually going out yourself or are you going to wait for Ellington to do it?_

I thought about what to say as I sat beside Ben. He looked at my phone in my lap.

"Are we sure what we're going to do?" he asked.

"I'm sure," I replied. I sent my answer to Karé.

The excited readers were lining up at the check-out, and Ben and I watched the store manager get on the intercom. I readied my Tweet to send.

"_Attention Barnes and Nobles guests! We'll be ringing up all the reserve purchases at the first three registers for _Broken_ by Candace Witherspoon, and if you don't have a copy reserved, you can line up at the fourth register as long as we have copies._"

I saw Ellington stride straight towards the manager and snatched the microphone out of her hands.

"I think you all need to know who's the real author behind the _Benefits_ series before you buy your copies. I've known for a while, and she's just too scared to admit who she really is. The author is sitting at the Barnes and Nobles cafe," Ellington said. All eyes gravitated towards the cafe. "The author's real name is..."

"It's me," Ben said, standing up.

"Ben, what are you doing?" I hissed. This was not the plan.

"I wrote the _Benefits_ series. Third one's on it's way! Thanks, err'body!"

"Ben!" I shouted, irritated. This was not our plan. Ellington stared at us in shock. "No, he's not the author. I am. Hi, my name is Alexis Castle, yes, _that_ Castle," everyone in line was staring at me, and there were a few dropped jaws, "and I wanted into the literary world on my own merit. Without my father's help. So, I wrote _Benefits_, and before I knew it, I was writing a three-book deal and couldn't tell anybody. Now, I'm going to come out and admit it. I'm a Columbia student by day, and Candace Witherspoon by night. I hope you'll still read my books. The third one's in edits as we speak, and it's due out next August. I hope you'll read it. Thanks."

I sent the Tweet from Candace's account confessing that I actually was Alexis Castle, and took Ben's hand to leave. The manager stole back the microphone from a stunned-looking Ellington, and ran up to me as Ben and I went to walk out amidst the chattering.

"Can you take a few questions?" she asked. "I think the readers have a few."

I glanced at Ben and he nodded. "Go for it," he said as the manager took my arm and lead me back into the store.

As I walked back in, the readers were standing around me, holding up their dog-earred copies of _Benefits_, begging for me to sign.

"I've never done a booksigning before," I admitted. I hadn't anticipated doing one, either. I saw Dad and Kate standing towards the back of the store, watching. Kate was holding a sleeping Jo-jo in her arms. I couldn't read their expressions, but Dad flashed me a thumbs-up and I knew it was all going to be okay, now.

"We can find some Sharpies," the manager said. She got the mic out. "Does anybody have any questions for Miss Castle?"

The crowd started chattering at once, I couldn't hardly hear anybody until the manager chose a woman who was in her thirties, at least, and handed her the microphone.

"Hi, I've read Benefits three times already, and I've bought copies for my friends to read, it's so good. I wanted to ask who inspired you to write Colton?"

"Oh," I blushed and got the mic back. "Well, Colton is a mix-up of a few of my ex-boyfriends and Jensen Ackles from _Supernatural_. I _love_ that show."

"So do I!" said one of the other ladies.

"Me too, he's so hot!"

I answered a few questions and they were actually really good ones. I was surprised at the depth of what was being asked about my characters- and excited that I had readers as excited about my story as I had been. They were so nice and polite, I was really pleased I had attracted readers like this!

"... Didn't you use your father's pull in the industry to get published?"

I realized it was Ellington, glowering at me and glaring, speaking into the mic with her fever-blistered lips.

"That's a funny question," I said seriously. "My father _did_ help me get into the industry and I'll tell you how. He paid for me to go to one of the best prep schools in the country, here in New York. He let me edit his manuscripts, minus the sex and violence, to teach me the proper use of English grammar. He kept our home stocked with more books than I could ever read, but still took me to the New York Public Library weekly and would read to me at night to put me to bed. I knew about the publishing industry because it was just part of my life. His second wife was an executive for Hyperion, and even though they're divorced now, we still talk. I knew all about getting an agent and how hard it was long before I queried... because of him. So, yeah, I used what my father unintentionally taught me about publishing to get into writing, even though I did most of it in secret. But he never helped me with editing or querying or getting an agent or selling my manuscript to Harper-Collins, because he didn't know about it. He just found out a few weeks before Christmas that I wrote Benefits, and I had been hiding it so much, it was making me paranoid. I'm ready to speak out, now."

Ellington's face turn bright red and she turned and stormed out.

I was honest with the world and it felt good.

"I wanted to know," another lady said, blushing, but there was seriousness behind her voice. "Is your love life as hot as what you write?"

I laughed, so did the others. "If you're asking if I've done every single sexual position I wrote about in the book, I'm going to be honest; no. I haven't, nor do I want to." There were some nervous giggles at that. "Most of that was research and fantasizing. Maybe about fifty per cent, and all the tamer stuff, that's all I'm going to tell you. But yes, my love life's on fire right now. I'm seeing somebody and we really… he's very important to me. And we're very happy together. Very, very happy together."

* * *

After the manager stopped me from taking anymore questions, a Barnes and Nobles employee came over with a handful of Sharpies and they pushed over boxes of _Broken_, I started signing the copies of the books for the readers. When I finally got out at three in the morning, Ben helped me into the apartment and we opened Candace's Twitter account on my laptop; Karé had confirmed my tweet that exposed who I really was, as did Dad. My follower count was rising and there were stories on CNN and Huffington Post already in the entertainment section about me coming out as Candace Witherspoon. Both were titled, _The Castle Gene: It Runs in the Family_.

The pressure I had been crumbling under had been lifted from my shoulder. I felt incredibly light, now. It was relief. I was so relieved.

"I'm so proud of you," Ben said. "I really am. Let's go to bed."

My phone dinged; I had gotten a text from Kathy.

I opened it.

_Hey girl. I've known for a while that you're really Alexis Castle. And I'm really proud of you for coming out about being Candace. Talk to you tomorrow? Love you._

I was touched. I'd find out tomorrow how she knew it.

We went to bed and in the morning, I checked my inbox. I had gotten a ton of new followers on both of my Twitters and emails from Karé.

I called Kathy on my way to school.

"Hi, Alexis," she said softly.

"How did you know I was Candace Witherspoon?'

"The Meta Data on the chapters you sent me," she said softly. "You told me that Candace wasn't your real name, it was penname. I knew you'd come out in time. And, I found a few other things about Ellington you might want to know."

"Oh really?"

"I used to be a paralegal before I published, remember? I can do my research."

* * *

That afternoon, the manager that Karé hired called me to let me know there were a lot of new medias that wanted to interview me, now that my identity was confirmed. I had no idea my life would change so dramatically. As for Columbia, if they wanted to fail me out in my last semester because I wrote porn… Oh well. Dad dropped out of Columbia his senior year, too. It wasn't the end of the world if I didn't complete my degree, now. I had wanted to get a degree just to go down a certain career path, but I wasn't sure how much I wanted that anymore. I had accomplished something already, and this goal left me feeling really satisfied. There was nothing out there that said I couldn't go back to school later in life. Besides, I had submitted a writing sample to Alloy for a write-for-hire job, and they chose me! I was going to be writing a historical fiction novel for Young Adult readers about a German girl who helped the "ghosts", or American operatives that helped prisoners of war escape the POW camps and stood in their places while they got away to escape home. It was exciting, and it would be under a pen name that Alloy could use in the future. I didn't keep that a secret, I announced it on my Twitter page. I chose the pen name of Marta Sanders, in honor of my grandmother.

Ellington was tweeting vitrolically towards me, claiming I had confessed that I only got published because of my father, now that I had confessed to being Candace. Ellington was being anything but professional. Most of the publishing industry thought she had gone psycho and the gossip blogs came down on her: really hard.

Kathy posted a link to jezebel dot com; a scandalous claim with evidence about E.K. Taylor; she was a high-school drop out from a trailer park in the mountains of Ellington, North Carolina, who was named Millicent Klompett. No seriously. Even pictures were included of her. She dropped out of high school because she got pregnant at age fifteen and then had her second child when she was seventeen. She had gotten involved in Derrick Storm fanfiction when it wasn't that big of a thing. The reason why was she had been arrested for child neglect and the North Carolina foster system took her children away was she was more involved in the internet than taking care of her babies. She wrote fanfiction with her critique partner, a girl named Destiny Maher, who had Cystic Fibrosis, and had died. Destiny had written a long Derrick Storm/Clara Force BDSM fanfiction, that was over 450,000 words and had taken it down before she died from CF (_Benefits_ tipped the scales at 110,000 words, which was near the limits of what editors accepted at the publishing houses for a first novel).

Destiny's brother didn't even know she had written it until he resurrected her old laptop and found the fanfic, and did some research; it had been published for a short while on a now-defunct fanfiction website. Destiny had even credited Millicent for her help in "betaing" her work when she published it to the web, initially. She had even done a poor man's copyright on her fanfiction when she and Millicent got into a violent argument before she died. When Destiny died, Millicent (or Ellington) did a control + R and replaced the characters names of Derrick Storm and Clara Force, and descriptions, and divided the manuscript up into three separate books for a trilogy. Destiny's fanfic was 90 per cent the same at Ellington's books, according to the plagiarism website TurnItIn. That's where her first three books came from; they weren't hers, they weren't even Destiny's because they were fanfiction of my father's characters and settings. It all made sense why Ellington had thrown herself repeatedly at my father; she had idolized him and read his books, and she hated me and Kate for standing in her way and being a 'competitor' in her sick mind. There was definitely some unhealthy psychological behaviors going on here; narcissism and paranoia at the most. She had been hospitalized a few times by the state for these behaviors a few years ago. No wonder she had called me and Kate name and put down my baby sister, too; she was mentally unstable and needed help. The Old Money ladies ran in terror from her, and claimed they didn't know her from a hole in the ground once Kathy's claims were finished.

This was also why Ellington's last two books didn't sound at all like her first series. And Destiny's brother was fighting mad and ready to sue Ellington for all she was worth for stealing the story.

Ellington was done. Not just James-Frey-A-Million-Little-Pieces done, but the publishing industry would never, ever, ever touch her again or give her another chance. I sent the story to Dad, and he took a long time to respond to it.

By the time Dad responded, _Publishers Weekly_ announced that Ellington's next book was cancelled and she was facing legal repercussions from her publishing house. Dad wrote a blog to his fans regarding Kathy's research and article. He didn't blame his fans, but said that he didn't mind his fans having fun by using his book's characters, settings, and themes and reinterpreting the storylines, as long nobody made a personal profit. He wanted his fans to enjoy creating with his characters and he felt that it was a good opportunity to start writing, if his fans wanted to be creative; he was 100 per cent behind that. But then, he then told them that if he ever found an original book that was first published to the internet as fanfiction that showed more than 50 per cent similarity or more to any fanfics that used his characters, he was banning all Derrick Storm and Nikki Heat fanfiction, like JD Robb and Anne Rice did. He just wasn't having it if people were lacking ethics like this and taking advantage of his hard work as a writer. He hadn't spent more than five years researching and solving murders with the NYPD and risking his life, and to have someone steal from him and his wife and family? That was a no-go for him.

I said basically the same thing on my website, as did Kathy and many other authors. We wanted to make it certain that we were fine with other people using our characters for fun, but trying to publish it without completely reworking the manuscript, and only using the control + R function, that was stealing from us. It was not acceptable. We only had copyrights to our work for about a hundred years, and then it went into public domain for public use. All I could think of was Jo-jo and the new baby when it came to the copyright laws and how hard Dad had worked to create these two smash hit series. Derrick Storm had only come out about fifteen years ago, Dad was supposed to make money off this creation for the rest of his natural life. What happened when Jo-jo, the baby, and I inherited the rights to his estate to finish out that 100 year copyright? Maybe that was greedy, but Dad wanted us to have the rights, not let somebody else take advantage of his work and make money off it. Ellington had no right or permission to steal from him, or from Destiny, who had never considered publishing her fanfiction for profit.

After the hoopla of what Ellington did died down in March, Karé called me with good news: she had a few new adult editors at Penguin and Harper-Collins asking about_ Love's Triangle_, the book I had tried to get someone to take a look at a year and a half ago. She was negotiating a deal for it, and the advance would be in the hundreds of thousands for three books at least. I thought about Karé telling me it was not sellable without my father's name. That felt like it had happened longer ago than a year and a half ago. It was before Dad and Kate got married, before Jo-jo, and before I had met Ben. He was my life, now. I had gone so far to tell him my number about a year ago. We had said, 'I love you' but not really meant it. Right?

I wasn't sure, now.

As my semester wound down and I prepared to graduate, I was surprised that nobody seemed to really hold it against me that I had written one of the fastest-selling erotica series in the last two years. I got a few pervy emails from random people, but never my fellow students. I guess that said a lot about the class and intellect of students at Columbia, and I was proud to count myself as a student.

Occasionally, in my classes, a fellow student, usually female, would timidly approach me after class and ask me if I really was Alexis Castle, and then shyly ask me if I'd sign their copy of _Benefits_ and _Broken_. I happily obliged and started a conversation with them. It was a quick way to start a friendship, too.

It was during my last final, I turned in my last History essay exam to my professor.

"Miss Castle," she said. "If you'd stay for just a moment while I grade your essay?"

"Oh, sure," I said. I went back to my seat and waited.

Then, the paranoia came back. She knew about my writing. She knew my alter-ego and wasn't going to let me pass so I couldn't graduate and-

"Miss Castle?"

"Yes?" I asked, approaching her desk.

She handed back my test. There was a bright and shiny A written at the top in red and I felt my blood pressure drop. "Oh," I whispered. "Thank you."

"One more thing," she said, opening her briefcase.

She pulled out a copy of my books.

"I heard a best-selling writer was attending Columbia. You can imagine my surprise when I discovered it was an erotica novel," she said primly. Oh shit. She was going to give me crap about it.

I shrugged. "I apologize if I disappointed you." I couldn't do anything now.

"That's just the thing; I thought these books would be pulp trash, not worth the cost, like most current erotica. And then I gave your book a try. Yes, there's room to grow. I think in the future, if you don't start writing for the paycheck and focus on the art, you'll grow into your abilities and become one of the great writers of our time. In the mean time," she said, her glasses on the tip of her nose, "I'm proud you got your start here at Columbia and that I had the pleasure of teaching you, Miss Castle. Could you sign my copies, please?"

"Oh!" I cried, surprised. "Sure."

* * *

"Alexis, I don't know if I can live in Williamsburg much longer," Ben admitted as we were getting our graduation gowns on for the ceremony. Dad's graduation present to Ben was the general light blue robe and cap that were regulation at Columbia. He had military cords in red and blue, and the Master's hood that would be flipped during the ceremony. "I might end up moving really far out to Oakland Gardens. Merrit's moving to California and I can't afford that apartment in Williamsburg on my own."

"That's pretty far," I admitted.

"We'll see each other. We'll just have to make plans for the weekends and stick to them," he said. "It has to be priority."

"Oh," I muttered. I knew I couldn't always get what I wanted. "You'll be so far away."

"It's about as far out as Williamsburg to here. I might be able to get job in Connecticut at one of the country prep schools out there, teaching English. I don't know."

"You don't sound enthused," I pointed out. "You want to stay in Brooklyn and Manhattan?"

"I do," he said. "I've gotten job offers out here, but I don't think I can afford to stay here-

"Well… Dad's not subsidizing my apartment by the end of the summer. If you wanted to move in together, the apartment's rent-controlled, as long as a legal relative of Kate's stays in it, she can sub-let it to us," I offered. "It's pretty reasonable."

"Like how reasonable?"

"I'm paying like two-thousand a month right now," I said. "So if we paid half of that…"

"That's about what I'd have paid for the studio apartment in Oakland Gardens," he said, catching on to what I was suggesting. "That's do-able. You want to move in together?"

"Yeah, I do," I admitted. "I can live with that. We can start moving your things over after the graduation ceremony!" I was excited at the idea of us moving in together.

"Um, Allie?" he asked. He went over to my closet and opened it- I realized so many of his things were already moved in here, what was the point?

I laughed.

Graduation was sunny and light, but as we took the subway, the news ticker in the subway station said that the suspect in the Sept Lindo case had been arrested and taken into custody. Ben and I just shrugged it off. We went to the graduation ceremony, and while my name was called, I felt proud: I wasn't hiding who I was any more. It was freeing. And my career as an erotica writer wasn't destruction of my life to get my foot in the door. It had felt like I had sold my soul to the devil. It hadn't been that bad after all.

Ben was honored with the other eleven MFA students and his hood was flipped to designate he had graduated. I was so proud of him.

After the ceremony, we met my family by the lions, and Grams had flown in to see me get my diploma. She was a busy lady, lately, and I missed her. She had won a Tony Award for _Hocus Pocus_, and we were so proud of her, but her career had a second wind. Which meant she was riding it for all it was worth to take care of herself towards the end of her life. "You did something your father could never do," Grams teased, hugging me.

"You'll never let that go, will you, Mother?" Dad asked.

"We're going to head to the Hamptons," Kate said. "Martha, are you sure you can't go with us?"

Grams sighed. "I could only come to Alexis's graduation. I have to head out to London." The British premiere of Hocus Pocus was opening, and she needed to be there on the red carpet, and then she was going to appear on_ East Enders_ in a cameo role. "I'll miss it, and I'll wish I was there."

"I love you, Grams," I said, hugging her again. "Travel safely."

"I will, kiddo. I love you and I'm proud of you, too." She kissed me on the cheek loudly and probably left a lipstick mark. I grinned- I wasn't wiping it off anytime soon. "Bye."

"_Gams_!" Jo-jo shrieked from Dad's arms, wiggling. She wanted a hug of her own before Grams caught her flight.

"A picture! I need to get a picture!" Dad cried, getting out his camera.

"I'll take it for you," Ben volunteered, reaching out to take the camera.

"Wait," Kate said. "Ben, you've paid your dues, you get in on the picture."

"Who's going to take it?" Ben asked.

"Hey!" Kate called after someone who was standing nearby. I heard Dad's phone ring, but he ignored it. "Can you take our family's picture?"

We posed around the lions, showing our diplomas. Afterwards, we were debating with Kate about where to have dinner, but Dad interjected after checking his phone.

"We need to get to the precinct," he said. "Ryan and Espo want us there for something. They just called me."

"I heard they were handling the Lindo attempted murder case and they just broke a lead," Kate said. She had been at a desk job for the last month and wasn't quite in on all these things as much as Dad was.

"They want us all there," Dad said.

We took the cab to the precinct and met my parents there, only to be greeted with the bullpen applauding Ben and me as we walked in wearing our graduation robes and greeted by Captain Gates, who hugged me. Laney was there, too.

"We've known you for almost ten years now, and we've watched you grow up," Gates said. "You've written a scandalous book and gotten your degree. Alexis Castle, we are proud to call you one of our own family. And we pitched in and got you a present now that you've graduated from one of the most respected Universities in the country. Congratulations young lady, you are on your way." She presented me with a briefcase with my initials in the leather.

"Aww, thank you!" I cried, flattered. "I love it! It's beautiful! Thank you! Thank you so much!"

I hugged a few of Kate and Dad's good friends and thanked them, but we were missing Espo and Ryan. "I think we need to see this," Dad said, taking my arm. He had handed Jo-jo over to her godmother, Laney, who was happily watching her for the next few minutes. He and Kate escorted me to the interrogation watching room, so we could watch from the other side of the two-way mirror. A pretty girl with blonde waves was sitting at the desk, turning bright red sitting beside her lawyer, and Espo and Ryan were grilling her. Espo was being the bad cop, Ryan the good cop. She was pissed, and it showed on her face and crossed arms.

"... You know, Heather, if you just confess, we can get you a plea deal to the attempted murder of Septimus Lindo. You might even be able to stay out of prison. All you have to do is confess," Ryan said.

I glanced at Dad. "They've got enough evidence," Kate pointed out, rubbing her 7-month pregnant belly. "They can hang her on that alone."

"It took them long enough," I noted.

"Well, the case went cold because the Lindos wouldn't work with us, but some of their help finally did," Kate admitted.

"I doubt a pretty girl like you will fare well in prison," Esposito said. "They will crucify you, Heather. Just take the damn plea deal."

Her face was turning purple, practically.

"We're not pleading to anything," the lawyer said.

"We've got evidence," Esposito barked. "We'll hang her in the courtroom! No amount of money is going to keep you out of jail unless you make a deal. Time is running o-"

"That bastard gave me _herpes_!" the woman shouted, interrupting Esposito. I clapped a hand over my mouth. Everybody else watching Heather's investigation had a similar reaction of shock. I found myself laughing in shock. Sept Lindo had herpes? I had proof I had never slept with him, now. "He gave me _genital fucking herpes_! I'm not suitable to have sex with anybody anymore! I'm not going on _fucking H-date_ to find men! He's a walking STD factory and he _gave me one_! And you think I'm going to confess to trying to kill him? No way! I'm not taking the heat for it with jail time, I'm doing time _right fucking now_ when I can't have sex! You'll just have to take me to trial!" she screamed.

Ryan and Esposito were dead silent.

"We'll give you and your lawyer a few minutes to think about it," Ryan finally said, standing up. "Just consider it."

They pretty much sped out of the interrogation room, and once the door was shut, they collapsed on the floor, laughing so hard they couldn't move. Ryan even stopped making sound, it was like a silent scream for a moment. Kate ran to the women's room, she was laughing so hard, I'm sure she was wetting her pants.

"We're terrible people," Dad choked out between peals of laughter. "We're laughing a woman's grave misfortune."

"I could never find her guilty of attempted murder one. That was a crime of passion, and no woman could ever, ever…" Esposito had to giggle again, "find her guilty!"

"I can't imagine a worse fate," Ben said. "He shoulda let go of the rail! I bet he's wishing he had, now! What an asshole, infecting women with the herp!"

"Well, I can now officially put that rumor to rest that I ever had sex with him, because I'm STD free, always have been!" I cried. We all laughed even harder. "You know what else this means?" I asked as we were wiping our tears, realizing something. "Ellington probably has it!"

The bathroom door opened, and Kate heard me say that about Ellington and she turned around and went right back in. I almost fell over laughing at that. Ellington did have a cold sore on her upper lip at my book premier in February that she was trying to cover up.

"I'm going to hell," Ryan muttered.

"Meetcha there," Ben replied. They did an exploding fist-bump.

Everything was funnier now that I knew that Sept Lindo's chances of ever having consentual sex again with a willing partner (that he didn't pay) were now dead and buried. No woman would ever want to be seen on his arm ever again. It wouldn't be long before that interrogation video was released to the public, and Sept's disgusting ways were going to work against him now and forever.

One rich, herpes-infected douchebag was off the market, now. At least until they found the cure for genital herpes.

* * *

Kate almost went into premature labor she was laughing so hard. She almost lost control of her pregnant bladder, that's why she had to duck into the women's room.

After we laughed for a good half hour and Laney went to console Heather and tell her it wasn't the end of the world to have herpes as long as she was careful and took anti-virals whenever she had an outbreak. Apparently, herpes-free people could engage in a sexual relationship with someone with herpes if they were careful about the outbreaks.

We went to dinner after this giant mess. I talked Ben into coming to the Hamptons with us for a celebration weekend and to go to the beach. Well, if this wasn't up his alley, I'd ask Jim Beckett if we could have a weekend alone at his cabin in Vermont to go fishing.

"I hate to break up the fantastic day we've had so far," I began as we rode along on the LIE. I patted Jo-jo's chubby toddler leg in the far back of the SUV. She was snoozing on the way. "But, Ben and I have an announcement."

"We've decided to move in together," he said.

"You are?" Dad asked, a little horrified, turning around in the driver's seat.

"Yes," I said. "You're going to stop paying my rent for me, I'm going to write full-time, and Ben's going to take teaching jobs here in Manhattan. We're going to split the cost of our apartment. We want to stay in your place, and sublet as long as we can."

"I guess… if you two are ready for it," Kate said, uncertainty in her voice.

"It's do-able," I admitted. "I just want him to be here in Manhattan with me, not so far away, like in Jersey or Queens."

"I understand that," Kate admitted. "Long-distance relationships are difficult."

"We don't want it turning into that," Ben said.

"Are you really ready for this?" Dad asked. I knew he was thinking about how I moved in with Pi after only knowing him a few months. This was different. Ben and I had known each other for a long, long time. We knew each other's quirks and habits and annoyances. I hadn't known those things about Pi when we moved in together and it just showed me how much I needed to know these things before cohabitating again. I personally felt like I was ready, though.

"We're positive," Ben said. "I want to be here to take care of your daughter. I want to live in Manhattan, too. And we've known each other for a long time. This is just the next step in our relationship. I'm serious about Allie. I really am."

"It's a big step," Dad noted. "If you're sure."

"I am," Ben said, squeezing my leg.

"So am I."

* * *

The next few days in the Hamptons were like magic. Ben and I didn't bother with the society parties; I didn't want to run into Sept, now that his case of the herp had gone public. I had had enough of them, although suddenly the same people who had cheered Ellington on for tossing Chardonnay on me were trying to be my friend ('fair-weather' friends I didn't want or need). I did have the medical printout that I was STD free, which I took a picture of and posted to my personal Twitter account to put the Sept Lindo affair rumors to rest, even though I didn't care if those people liked me or not. All I needed was my best friends, Ben, my family, and writing, and I was happy.

My parents and Jo-jo were a ways down the beach to get a closer look at the fireworks, leaving us behind. Jo-jo was transfixed, and I could hear her tiny voice going, "_Wooooow_!" at the fireworks.

"I've got another surprise for you," Ben said. He sat down in the sand behind me, his legs wrapped around my hips. He held me comfortably, like we were old lovers. We _were_ old lovers, what was I talking about?

"What is it?"

"I got a publisher for my MFA project."

"You're kidding!" I cried. "Ben that's great news!"

He grinned at me. "Ain't it, though?"

"It is," I agreed. "Which publisher?"

He pinched my butt. "St. Martin's Press. I sold it for a nice little advance. Almost eighty thousand. That's pretty good for a non-commercial work, isn't it?"

"Is it," I said. "It really is."

"I can't tell anybody just yet," he admitted. "It's not enough to live off of alone, but it'll subsidize my teaching jobs so I don't have to work like a dog. It'll go in to _Publisher's Weekly_ by August."

"I'm so proud of you!" I cried, twisting around to kiss him.

"We're gonna make it, baby, I know it. And one more thing."

"Yeah?"

"My number's twelve."

I didn't know what he was talking about. "What?"

"My number. You're number eleven for me, Ashlyn was number twelve. And I don't want anybody else, now."

"Ben, I… I had no idea," I admitted quietly. "And you're being honest about it?"

"I swear on a stack of bibles, it's true."

I pressed my lips to his. "I love you, Benjamin Haversham."

"And I love you, Alexis Castle."

THE END


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